The old-fashioned New Englander is as unemotional as he is undemonstrative. For a moment Howard, always slow of speech and action, was too nonplussed to know what to do, deeply sorry as he felt for his wife. Then he leaned over and patted her hand--the hand that was scarcely less rough and scarred than his own--with his big calloused one. "You must stop grieving over Edith," he said gently, "and blaming yourself for what's happened. You've been a wonderful mother--there aren't many like you in the world. Think how well the other seven children are coming along, instead of how the eighth slipped up. Think how blessed we've been never to lose a single one of them by death. Think--" "I do think, Howard." Mrs. Gray pressed his hand in return, smiling bravely through her tears. "I'm an old fool to give way like this, an' a worse one to let you catch me at it. But it ain't wholly Edith I'm cryin' about. Land, every time I start to curse the devil for Jack Weston, I get interrupted because I have to stop an' thank the Lord for Peter. An' all the angels in heaven together singin' Halleluia led by Gabriel for choir-master, couldn't half express my feelin's for Sylvia! I guess 'twould always be that way if we'd stop to think. Our blessin's is so much thicker than our troubles, that the troubles don't show up no more than a little yellow mustard growin' up in a fine piece of oats--unless we're bound to look at the mustard instead of the oats. As it happens, I wasn't thinkin' of Edith at all at that moment, or really grievin' either. It was just--" "Yes?" asked Howard.