"If you mean as far as money goes, Mark,--no. We might have been well
to-do as country people go, I suppose--"

"Exactly!" said Margaret; "and you would have been as well off as
dozens of the people who are going about in society this minute! It's
the merest chance that we aren't rich. Just for instance: father's
father had twelve children, didn't he?--and left them--how much was
it?--about three thousand dollars apiece--"

"And a Godsend it was, too," said her mother, reflectively.

"But suppose Dad had been the only child, Mother," Margaret persisted,
"he would have had--"

"He would have had the whole thirty-six thousand dollars,
I suppose, Mark."

"Or more," said Margaret, "for Grandfather Paget was presumably
spending money on them all the time."

"Well, but, Mark--" said Mrs. Paget, laughing as at the vagaries of a
small child, "Father Paget did have twelve children--and Daddy and I
eight--" she sighed, as always, at the thought of the little son who
was gone,--"and there you are! You can't get away from that, dear."

Margaret did not answer. But she thought to herself that very few
people held Mother's views of this subject.

Mrs. Carr-Boldt's friends, for example, did not accept increasing
cares in this resigned fashion; their lives were ideally pleasant and