The children pressed round her, and her hands were soon at their proud and anxious work: coaxing stray curls into their place; proving the strength of the little arms; slipping a sock, to show the marbled rose of the round limbs. "Just feel Emmy's legs. She's as firm as firm. And look at Baby, how beautifully he's made. They're all healthy. There isn't an unsweet, unsound spot in one of them." [Illustration: "'There isn't an unsweet, unsound spot in one of them'"] "No, no, they look it. They're magnificent. And they're you all over again." "Barbara wasn't. She was the very image of her father." Her love of him conquered the stubborn silence of her grief, so that she did not shrink from the beloved name. "Susie," she said, when the little procession had, at its own petition, filed solemnly out again, "you can't say you've seen too much of them." Susie smiled sadly as she looked at the wreck that was poor Aggie. "No, my dear; but I haven't seen quite enough of you. There isn't much left of you, you know." "Me?" She paused, and then broke out again, triumphant in her justification: "No matter if there's nothing left of me. _They're_ alive." She raised her head. Worn out and broken down she might be, but she was the mother of superb children. Something stronger and more beautiful than her lost youth flamed in her as she vindicated her motherhood. She struck even Susie's dull imagination as wonderful. Half an hour later Aggie bent her aching back again over her work. She had turned a stiff, set face to Susie as she parted from her. John had come and gone, and it had not been awkward in the least. He was kind and courteous (time and prosperity had improved him), but he had, as Susie said, no eyes for any one but his wife. As Aggie worked she was assailed by many thoughts and many memories. Out of the past there rose a sublime and patient face. It smiled at her above a butchery of little lambs.