His  mother  drew  a  great  shuddering  sigh.  "  Come
in  here,"  she  called  out,  harshly,  and  Jerome  went
into  the  bedroom  and  stood  beside  her  bed.  The
curtain  was  not  drawn  over  the  one  window,  and  the
little  homely  interior  was  full  of  the  pale  dusk  of
dawn.  This  had  been  Ann  Edwards's  bridal  chamber,
and  her  children  had  been  born  there.  The  face  of
that  little  poor  room  was  as  familiar  to  Jerome  as  the
face  of  his  mother.  From  his  earliest  memory  the
high  bureau  had  stood  against  the  west  wall,  near  the
windoW;  and  a  little  rouud  table;  with  a  white  towel


and  a  rosewood  box  on  it,  in  the  comer  at  the  head  of
the  great  high-posted  bedstead,  which  filled  the  rest
of  the  room,  with  scant  passageway  at  the  foot  and
one  side.  Ann's  little  body  scarcely  raised  the  patch-
work quilt  on  the  bed ;  her  face,  sunken  in  the
feather  pillows,  looked  small  and  weazened  as  a  sick
child's  in  the  dim  light.  She  reached  out  one  little
bony  hand,  clutched  Jerome's  poor  jacket,  and  pulled
him  close.  "  What's  goin'  to  be  done  ?"  she  de-
manded, querulously.  "What's  goin'  to  be  done?
Do  you  know  what's  goin'  to  be  done,  Jerome  Ed-
wards ?"

The  boy  stared  at  her,  and  her  sharply  questioning
eyes  struck  him  dumb.
Ann  Edwards  had  always  been  the  dominant  spirit
in  her  own  household.  The  fact  that  she  was  so,
largely  on  masculine  sufferance,  had  never  been  fully
recognized  by  herself  or  others.  Now,  for  the  first
time,  the  stratum  of  feminine  dependence  and  help-
lessness, which  had  underlain  all  her  energetic  asser-
tion, was  made  manifest,  and  poor  little  Jerome  was
spurred  out  of  his  boyhood  into  manhood  to  meet
this  new  demand.
