From the Housetops

by George Barr McCutcheon

Lutie looked at her with deep affection in her eyes. "You ought to have a little baby of your own, Anne," she said.

"It's much nicer having yours," said Anne. "He's such a fat one."

Two weeks later they were all up in the country, and George was saying twice a day at least that Anne was the surprise and comfort of his old age. She was as gay as a lark. She sang,—but not grand opera selections. Her days were devoted to the cheerful occupation of teaching young Carnahan how to smile and how to count his toes.

But in the dark hours of the night she was not so serene. Then was her time for reflection, for wonder, for speculation. Was life to be always like this? Were her days to be merry and confident, and her nights as full of loneliness and doubt? Was her craving never to be satisfied? Sometimes when George and Lutie went off to bed and left her sitting alone on the dark, screened-in veranda, looking down from the hills across the sombre Hudson, she almost cried aloud in her desolation. Of what profit was love to her? Was she always to go on being alone with the love that consumed her?

The hot, dry summer wore away. She steadfastly refused to go to the cool seashore, she declined the countless invitations that came to her, and she went but seldom into the city. Her mother was at Newport. They had had one brief, significant encounter just before the elder woman went off to the seashore. No doubt her mother considered herself entitled to a fair share of "the spoils," but she would make no further advances. She had failed earlier in the game; she would not humble herself again. And so, one hot day in August, just before going to the country, Anne went up to her old home, determined to have it out with her mother.

"Why are you staying in town through all of this heat, mother dear?" she asked. Her mother was looking tired and listless. She was showing her age, and that was the one thing that Anne could not look upon with complacency.

"I can't afford to go junketing about this year," said her mother, simply. "This awful war has upset—"

"The war hasn't had time to upset anything over here, mother. It's only been going on a couple of weeks. You ought to go away, dearest, for a good long snooze in the country. You'll be as young as a débutante by the time the season sets in."

Mrs. Tresslyn smiled aridly. "Am I beginning to show my age so much as all this, Anne?" she lamented. "I'm just a little over fifty. That isn't old in these days, my dear."

"You look worried, not old," said her daughter, sympathetically. "Is it money?"