The right spring had been touched. Her children! She must live for her children. And she loved them, she did live for them! What were those little passing moments of exasperation! Nothing, compared to the passion for them which shook her like a great wind, whenever they were sick, whenever she felt how greatly they needed her. And how they did need her! Helen, with her delicate lungs, her impracticality, her helplessness--what could she do without her mother to take care of her? And Stephen--she shuddered to think of the rage into which some women would fly when Stephen was in one of his bad moods. Nobody but his own mother could be trusted to resist the white heat of anger which his furies aroused in the person trying to care for him. And Henry, poor little darling Henry! Who else would take the trouble, day by day, to provide just the right food for him? See what that one cookie had done to him this evening! Why, if Mattie Farnham had the care of that child, she and her delicatessen-store stuff.... Henry’s mother swiftly braided up her thinning hair. Her face was calmer. She was planning what she would give him for lunch the next day. Chapter 3 “Don’t you want to sit by the window here, Mrs. Farnham?” suggested Mrs. Prouty, the rector’s wife. “The light’ll be better for your sewing. That dark material is hard on the eyes.” All the Ladies’ Guild understood that Mrs. Farnham was being posted there to give the alarm when Mrs. Knapp turned into the walk leading to the Parish House, and they went on talking with an agreeable sense of security. “It’s pretty hard on those Willing’s Emporium people, I say,” Mrs. Prouty remarked, “after years of faithful service, to have everything turned topsy-turvy over their heads by a young whippersnapper. They say he’s going to change the store all around too; put the Ladies’ Cloak Department upstairs where the shoes always were; and he’s taken that top floor that old Mr. Willing rented to the Knights of Pythias and is going to add some new departments. A body won’t know where to find a thing! In my opinion he’ll live to regret it.” They all reflected silently that if the young Mr. Willing had only been an Episcopalian like his defunct uncle, instead of a Presbyterian, Mrs. Prouty might not have taken the change of the Ladies’ Cloak Department quite so hard. “Poor Mrs. Knapp feels simply terrible about her husband’s not being promoted,” said Mrs. Merritt, the doctor’s wife. “I saw her yesterday at Wertheimer’s for an instant. Not that she said anything. She wouldn’t, you know, not if she died for it. But you could feel it. All over her. And no wonder!” “Poor thing!” (Mrs. Prouty had acquired the full, solicitous intonation of the parish visitor.) “She has many burdens to bear. Mr. Prouty often says that in these days it is wonderful to see a woman so devoted to her duty as a home-maker. She simply gives up her whole life to her family! Absolutely!”