Page:Keeping the Peace.pdf/53

 liking to Armitage. His face was glowing and winning. He was at once embarrassed and natural.

Sarah even forgot that she was fourteen, and ashamed of it, and, when he spoke to her, lifted her fine eyes to his and smiled at him. Mark and James noted the cut of the young man's blue and white blanket clothes—an importation from the wilds of Canada—and envied him his coonskin hat with the coon's tail hanging down behind for a tassel.

But Edward, a close student of curious matters since the episode of the Dresden china urn, marveled less at Mr. Armitage and his outfit than at his own mother.

She looked positively amiable and sport-loving. You would have thought that she lived entirely, in a big, wholesome, understanding way, for the profit of young people, especially men. You would have thought that rugs damaged by snow water meant nothing in the even, generous tenor of her life.

"But Mr. Armitage, I assure you that it doesn't matter in the least. It doesn't matter that" Here Mrs. Eaton actually and quite loudly snapped her thumb and forefinger. Edward had never seen her do this before. "First, last, and always youth must be served. I haven't raised six chil-