Outside the big country house summer sunshine flooded the smooth
lawns, sparkled on the falling diamonds and still pool of the
fountain, glowed over acres of matchless wood and garden. But deep
awnings made a clear cool shade indoors, and the wide rooms were
delightfully breezy.

Margaret, busy with a ledger and cheque-book, smiled absently,
finished a long column, made an orderly entry, and wiped her pen.

"Seven," said she, smiling.

"Seven!" echoed Mrs. Potter, lazily. "My heaven--seven children!
How early Victorian!"

"Isn't it?" said a third woman, a very beautiful woman, Mrs. Watts
Watson, who was also idling and reading in the white-and-gray
morning room. "Well," she added, dropping her magazine, and locking
her hands about her head, "my grandmother had ten. Fancy trying
to raise ten children!"

"Oh, everything's different now," the first speaker said indifferently.
"Everything's more expensive, life is more complicated. People used
to have roomier houses, aunts and cousins and grandmothers living with
them; there was always some one at home with the children. Nowadays
we don't do that."

"And thank the saints we don't!" said Mrs. Watson, piously. "If
there's one thing I can't stand, it's a houseful of things-in-law!"