The next day the neighbor sent her over the book; the title arrested her attention oddly--"The Woman's Kingdom." Another phrase correlated with it in her memory--"Queen of the Home." That was supposed to be woman's domain, where she was the sovereign power; there she was helper, sustainer, director, the dear dispenser of favors. The woman's kingdom, queen of the home. Gradually the words led her down long lanes of retrospect, led by the rose-leaf touch of the baby's fingers; _they_ kept her strong. What kingdom had she ever made her own? She, poor, bedraggled, complaining suppliant, a beggar where she should have been a queen! Home and the heart of her husband--there lay her woman's kingdom, her realm, her God-given province. She had had the ordering of it, none other: she had married a good man. Glad or sorry, that kingdom was as her rule made it; she must be judged by her government--as she was queen enough to hold it. She fell asleep that day thinking of the words. Day by day, other thoughts came to her more or less disconnectedly,--set in motion by those magic words,--when she lay at rest in the afternoons, with the book in her fingers and the dear little baby form close beside her. Lois was one of those women of intense feeling who can never perceive from imagination, but only from experience--who cannot even adequately sympathize with sorrows and conditions which they have not personally experienced. No advice touches them, for the words that embody it are in a language not yet understood. The mistakes of the past seem to have been necessary, when they look back. Given the same circumstances, they could not have acted differently; but they seldom look back--the present, that is always climbing on into the future, occupies them exclusively.