This small fact led to a train of thought that restored her shattered prestige. She remembered numberless instances when she had been obliged to exercise tact and perseverance to eradicate some budding trait in one or other of the children. She had noticed Hugh's adenoids before the possibility of trouble in the nose had occurred to nurse. It was she, and not Rodney who dealt with Geoffrey's tendency to deceit and subterfuge, and who was always called upon to arbitrate in any childish difficulty. Turning off the light she went back to the day nursery where nurse was sitting darning. "Nurse," she said firmly, "I've said before that Geoffrey is not to read at supper and to-night again I found him with a book." "Well he only had one page to finish the book, Mrs. Greene, so I thought it wouldn't matter for once." "I don't believe in that, Nurse," said Edith serenely. "If I make a rule then it is a rule, and there should be no exceptional cases when you allow it to be broken." "I'm sorry," said Nurse stiffly, and Edith went down to the drawing-room where Rodney was sitting, holding a paper, but looking guiltily over the top of it at the door, evidently expecting her entrance. "My dear Rodney," she said, "I have been very foolish. It was absurd of me to let myself be vexed by what you said. I know very well that it is only because you cannot possibly enter into my feelings, that you misunderstand and misrepresent me." Rodney was at a loss. He had been prepared to retract his words but there appeared to be no need to do so. They had already been discounted. He cleared his throat, trying to think of an appropriate and inoffensive reply, but Edith continued her elaborate little speech. "I ought to realise by now that nobody can share in a mother's responsibility to her children; nobody can appreciate her ideals." "Well that's putting it a bit strong, you know; after all even a mother is a human being," Rodney spoke with an accent of faint bitterness, but Edith was unperturbed. "Dear Rodney," she said, "we are a very happy and united family aren't we? I've just been up to the three little people--Hugh and Lavinia sleeping so sweetly--and I feel I need no reward for all I do for them except the consciousness that I mean everything to them. That," she ended nobly, "is all that is necessary to a good mother." V As her three children grew older, Edith consciously and tactfully modified her attitude towards them. They had been so accustomed to deferring to her judgment, they had seen their father so constantly adopting her views, and praises of their wonderful mother had rung so continually in their ears that when Geoffrey was eighteen, Lavinia sixteen, and Hugh fifteen, they still kept up the habits of childhood in never opposing her. She could afford by that time to make a show of consulting them, to appear to ask their advice, safe in the conviction that her choice would ultimately be theirs also.