Their clothes came to them like the leaves on the trees, and her
deft fingers added little ornaments that cost the wearers no more thought
than did the blossoms of spring to the unconscious plants of the garden.
She was as essential to her husband as the oxygen in the air, and he knew
it, although demonstrating his knowledge rather quietly, perhaps. But she
understood him, and enjoyed a little secret exultation over the strong
man's almost ludicrous helplessness and desolation when her occasional
absences suspended for a brief time their conjugal partnership. She
surrounded the old people with a perpetual Indian-summer haze of
kindliness, which banished all hard, bleak outlines from their late
autumnal life. In brief, she was what God and nature designed woman to
be--the gracious, pervading spirit, that filled the roomy house with
comfort and rest. Sitting near were her eldest son and pride, a lad about
thirteen years of age, and a girl who, when a baby, had looked so like a
boy that her father had called her "Johnnie," a sobriquet which still clung
to her. Close to the mother's side was a little embodiment of vitality,
mischief, and frolic, in the form of a four-year-old boy, the dear torment
of the whole house.
There remain but two others to be mentioned, and the Clifford family will
be complete, as constituted at present. The first was the youngest son of
the aged man at the head of the table.
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