Page:Keeping the Peace.pdf/14

 In more than one way he owed the fact that he was born at all to his mother. For if she had not wanted another child to make a round half-dozen in all, she wouldn't have had one.

The first face which Edward learned to distinguish from other faces resembled the face of a horse. It was long, narrow and Roman. The upper teeth projected in a kind of shelf and gave the face an extraordinary air of command and self-satisfaction. The face surmounted a long, bony, awkward, strong, tireless body. And it was the dwelling place of a highly cultivated voice which, without being raised or forced in any way, could be made to penetrate into the most remote fastnesses of the house and grounds.

Though Mrs. Eaton would have called herself a Christian gentlewoman, it is probable that in her heart of hearts she took more pleasure and pride in her pedigree than in her religion. Oddly enough, she had swallowed both upon hearsay evidence; but she had caused the pedigree to be emblazoned and fine writ on parchment, and it was a thing of beauty and carried conviction in every leaf and twig of the design. Mrs. Eaton's pedigree—she had been Harriet Burton before her marriage—so far as it could be made visible, took the form of an extraordinarily gnarled, aged oak, and so im perishable that Edward used to wonder why, if the