diphtheria, indeed, there had been no serious illness in the family, and as she approached middle-age, her terror of illness increased rather than diminished. The children made up for much--they ought to have made up for everything--and yet did they? There was no visible fault that she could attribute to them. With her temperamental inability to see flaws, she was accustomed to think of them as perfect children, as children whom she would not change, had she the power, by so much as a hair or an outline. They grew up, straight, fine, and fearless, full of the new spirit, eager to test life, to examine facts, possessed by that awakening feeling for truth which had always frightened her a little in Susan. Vaguely, without defining the sensation, she felt that they were growing beyond her, that she could no longer keep up with them, that, every year, they were leaving her a little farther behind them. They were fond of her, but she understood from something Jenny said one day, that they had ceased to be proud of her. It was while they were looking over an old photograph album of Susan's that, coming to a picture of Virginia, taken the week before her wedding, Jenny cried out: "Why, there's mother!" and slipped it out of the page. "I never saw that before," Lucy said, leaning over with a laugh. "You were so young when you married, mother, and you wore such tight sleeves, and a bustle!" "Would you ever have believed she was as pretty as that?" asked Jenny, with the unconscious brutality of childhood. "If you are ever as beautiful as your mother was, you may thank your stars," said Susan dryly, and by the expression in her face Virginia knew that she was thinking, "If that was my child, I'd slap her!" Harry, who had been stuffing fruitcake on the sofa--sweets were his weakness--rose suddenly and came over to the group. "If you are ever as beautiful as she is now, you may thank your stars, Miss Yellow Frisk!" he remarked crushingly.