boys. But Anne cried herself into being sick, at school, and it
was decided to keep her at home for a while. So Anne followed
Agnes about, Agnes and the radiant Priscilla, who was giggling her
way through a dimpled, rose-pink babyhood; the best of the four,
and the easiest to manage. Priscilla chewed her blue ribbons
peacefully, through all domestic ups and downs, and never cried
when the grown-ups went away, and left her with Agnes.




Chapter Twenty-six


Worse than any real or fancied change in the children, however,
was the unmistakable change in Bert. Heartsick, Nancy saw it. It
was not that he failed as a husband, Bert would never do that; but
the bloom seemed gone from their relationship, and Nancy felt
sometimes that he was almost a stranger. He never looked at her
any more, really looked at her, in the old way. He hardly listened
to her, when she tried to engage him in casual talk; to hold him
she must speak of the immediate event--the message Joe had left
for him, the plan for to-morrow's luncheon. He was popular with
the men, and his wife would hear him chucklingly completing
arrangements with them for this affair or that, even while she was
frantically indicating, with everything short of actual speech,
that she did not want to go to Little Mateo's to dinner; she did
not want to be put into the Fieldings' car, while he went off with
Oliver Rose in his roadster.