Her voice was harsh and dry; but they all knew why. And she was quite aware of the silent glosses and commentaries she knew them to be supplying mentally. She pinned her roll of sewing together firmly. Nobody could put in a pin with her gesture of mastery. “My first duty is to my home and children,” she said. “Oh, yes, oh, yes, we all know that, of course.” Mr. Prouty gave to the aphorism a lip-service which scantily covered his bitter objection to it in this case. “Our circumstances don’t permit us to hire help,” she added, making this resolutely a statement of fact and not a complaint. “I do the washings, you know.” “I know. Wonderful! Wonderful!” said Mr. Prouty irritably. “She sets an example to us all, I always tell ’em,” said Mrs. Farnham. “Yes, indeed you _do_, Mrs. Knapp!” they all agreed fervently. Evangeline knew that this was their way of trying to make up to her for having a poor stick of a husband. She savored their compassion with a bitter-sweet mixture of humiliation over her need for it and of triumph that she had drawn this sympathy from them under the appearance of repelling it. “Nobody ever heard _me_ complain!” she was saying to herself. “Well, I’ll do what I can,” she said, standing up to go. “I’ll think of things. I’ve just thought of another. If we can provide the nurse with dinner every day, that ought to cut down on cash expenses. There are twenty-four members of the Guild. That’d hardly mean more than one dinner a month for each of us. And it would cut off fifteen dollars a month from the money we’d have to provide. And in that way we could keep in closer touch with her. Seeing her every day and hearing about her work, we’d be more apt to coöperate with her right along.” “Splendid! Simply splendid!” cried Mr. Prouty. “We will be the only parish of our size in the State to have a visiting nurse of our own.” He saw himself at the next diocesan meeting the center of a group of envious clergymen, expounding to them the ingenious devices by which this remarkable result had been achieved. He had had a good deal of this sort of gratification since the Knapps had moved into his parish. Chapter 4 “Who swoon in sleep and awake wearier.” As he woke up, Lester Knapp heard the words in the air as he so often heard poetry, “... and awake wearier!” He was tired to the bone. He would have given anything in the world to turn over, bury his face in the pillow and swoon to sleep again. And never wake up! But the alarm-clock had rung, and Evangeline had risen instantly. He heard her splashing in the bathroom now. With an effort as though he were struggling out of smothering black depths, he sat up and swung his feet over the edge of the bed. Gosh! How little good he seemed to get from his sleep. He was tireder when he woke up than when he went to bed.