They came in, a pathetic little procession, three golden-haired couples,
holding one another's hands.
First, Arty and Emmy, then Catty and Baby, then Willie and Dick, all
solemn and shy. Baby turned his back on the strange aunt and burrowed into
his mother's lap. They were all silent but Dick. Dick wanted to know if
his Auntie liked birfdays, and if people gave her fings on her
birfday--pausing to simulate a delicate irrelevance before he announced
that _his_ birfday was to-morrow.
"Dickie, dear," said his mother, nervously, "we don't talk about our
birthdays before they've come."
She could not bear Susie to be able to say that one of her children had
given so gross a hint.
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.
Yes, Susie was right about her John. There was no weak spot in him. He had
not a great intellect, but he had a great heart and a great will. Aggie
remembered how once, in her thoughtful maiden days, she had read in one of
the vicar's books a saying which had struck her at the time, for the vicar
had underlined it twice. "If there is aught spiritual in man, it is the
Will." She had not thought of John as a very spiritual person. She had
dimly divined in him the possibility of strong passions, such passions as
make shipwreck of men's lives. And here was Arthur--he, poor dear, would
never be shipwrecked, for he hadn't one strong passion in him; he had only
a few weak little impulses, incessantly frustrating a will weaker than
them all. She remembered how her little undeveloped soul, with its
flutterings and strugglings after the immaterial, had been repelled by the
large presence of the natural man. It had been afraid to trust itself to
his strength, lest its wings should suffer for it. It had not been afraid
to trust itself to Arthur; and his weakness had made it a wingless thing,
dragged down by the suffering of her body.