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 door. In this room the blinds were always drawn and sunlight entered only through chinks. It smelled of new rag carpet and freshly starched pillow shams and a slight mustiness, sweetish, and not altogether unpleasant. It had an air of cool, clean, quiet sanctity. After the children it was Lizzie May's greatest pride.

Judith often wondered why it was that Lizzie May got on so much better than herself. It was not hard to see why she was a better housekeeper. She had always liked housework and taken an interest in it. Besides, she did nothing else, never even venturing as far as the barnyard. Dan did all the outside chores and when he needed help in the field he called on one of his younger brothers.

But she was a better wife, too, for just what reason Judith did not know, though she was beginning to have vague thoughts on the subject. There appeared to be between her and Dan a settled, comfortable intimacy based on as perfect an understanding as can exist between a man and a woman. She bullied and nagged him a good deal about various things: his habits of drinking and fox hunting, his muddy shoes, his carelessness of her company table cloth. But she did not mean a great deal by the scoldings and he took them complacently. He on his side, though decidedly selfish in personal matters like most husbands, adored his family and considered his wife the sum of all perfections. Judith was quite sure that Jerry no longer regarded herself as perfect. What was worse, she felt her feelings gradually numbing into a growing indifference toward him. She saw quite clearly that Lizzie May and Dan got on much better than she and Jerry.

As a mother, too, Lizzie May was better than she. She hardly ever slapped her children or fell into a rage with them. They did not seem to annoy her. Why was this, Judith asked herself uneasily. She thought she loved her children quite as much as Lizzie May loved hers. Perhaps she did; but then quite possibly she did not. What was the matter with herself that she should be a failure? She began to brood and look into herself.