This is a story of character against a New England background.
Each character is worked out with the delicacy and minuteness of a
cameo. Each is intensely realistic, yet, as in the cameo, palely
flushed with romance. "Mother," along with her originality of
action and long-concealed ideals, has the saving quality of
common-sense, which makes its powerful appeal to the daily
realities of life. Thus when "Father," dazed by the unexpected
revelation of the character and ideals of the woman he has
misunderstood for forty years, stands uncertain whether to assert
or to surrender his long-established supremacy, she decides him in
her favor by a practical suggestion of acquiescence: "You'd better
take your coat off an' get washed--there's the wash-basin--an'
then we'll have supper."