“But all that had to do with children was intimate and wonderful to me.... I remember once when we were all girls at home together, and they were talking--each of what she should have for her treasure from the household--one walnut, one silver, one an inlaid desk--and they turned to me laughingly, for I was not consulted as a rule, I said I wanted the little hickory cradle in an upper closet. It was one of those household days which girls remember.... All was happier then. The little cradle seemed like a casket in which jewels had come to my mother--seven times. We had all smiled at her first from that hickory cradle.... I went up stairs to look at it--a dim place full of life and messages to me. I was weak; my arms ached; and it was so dear that I dare not say that it was mine.... My father said the cradle must belong to the eldest girl. “... I began to sense the terrible actuality of life through the mating of Lois, ten years older, with a countryman who came for her. For sisters, Lois and I had always been far apart, and this stranger who wished to marry her, had nothing to do with life as I dreamed it--a child of twelve. To many, Lois was the loveliest of us--large, calm, dark and quiet, very well, slow of speech, but quick to smile. Had you visited our house then, you would have remembered my father’s patriarchal air, the smile of Lois, and the maternity that brooded over us all. The rest you would get afterward--a variety of young people with different faults and attractions--I the grey one, last to be noted. Lois was given credit for more than she was. I do not love brain or power, but I seem to love courage. Lois had something to take the place of these--not courage--and no, not power nor brain. She had sensuousness and appetite. “One night I seemed to see what the whole house was straining for--a kind of process of marriage continually afoot. Just now it was Lois. I remember my father being called into the front room where Lois and Collinge had been for an evening--his face beaming when he came forth, and my mother’s quiet sanction. There were conferences after that, dressmaking, the arrangement of money affairs. And I was suddenly ill with it. To me, there could be no trade or public business. To me, it had to do with a child and that was consecrated ground. Oh, you must see it had to be different. I wanted it like a stroke of lightning. I did not understand but I wanted it like that--like a flight of swans--and not talk and property transactions. To me it had to do with rain and frost and the tides and the pulses of plants--the silent things. I did not understand--but knew that children came to those who took each other.