"It's a funny thing, Joel, you've known me for quite a spell--thirty-seven years, the sixth of October--and you haven't found out yet that I'm not looking for an easy time. My idea of Heaven ain't a place where you can sit down and fold your hands." "I s'pose you'd rather stick at home and fuss over other folks' children than travel. You used to be crazy about foreign places, Roosia and Italy and Egypt." Joel's eyes kindled with an unholy light as he repeated the magic names. A bystander might have been reminded of another tempter showing the kingdoms of the earth as a lure. "Time enough to travel," Persis said laconically, "when my family is raised." "Giving up all the peace of your home, all the quiet--" "Stillness isn't peace, Joel. There's quiet enough in the grave, if that's what you're after. I don't want the hush of the tomb around here. I want little feet tripping up and down and little voices calling. Seems to me as if this old house had come alive since I brought these children into it. And I've come alive myself. It's what I always wanted, a family of children. I gave it up like I've given up so many things, but I've got it at last, thank God." "Persis," Joel remonstrated in shocked accents, "it's not becoming for a single woman to say things like that. Wanting children, indeed. If you weren't my sister I shouldn't know what to make of such talk." She leaned toward him, her hands on her knees. Her gray eyes, warmed almost to blue by joy and tenderness, were steely as she faced him. "Joel, you don't take it into account that the Almighty didn't make old maids. He made us just women, and the hunger for children is nothing more to be ashamed of than the longing for food and drink. I'm not accusing Him either, when I say that life isn't fair to a lot of us. It hangs other people's burdens on our backs, and they weigh us down till we haven't the strength to take what is rightfully ours. These children had ought to be mine. My blood ought to be in their veins. It's too late for that, but it's not too late for everything. What would Aunt Persis Ann's money be worth to me if all it meant was that I could fix up the house and leave off making dresses for other folks and travel around and see the world? It's done more than that. It's made up to me for being cheated out of my rights. It's made me a woman at last." Up-stairs sounded a fretful wail, a sharp little note, piercing the quiet evening with its suggestion of discomfort or alarm. In an instant Persis was on her feet. Again her face was luminous. Suffused with a transforming tenderness, it lost its stern lines and became radiantly youthful. Blue misty shadows veiled the steely light of her eyes. "The baby's crying," she said, and left him swiftly. And Joel, with a bewildered sense of enlightenment carried to the point of dazzling effulgence, clapped both hands over his throbbing head.