children. They had escaped, to a great degree, the demoralising influences of children's magazines, "The Children's Page" in newspapers, and children's plays, and they had not been amused to death. Annette, it is true, had not mastered the science of managing servants, but in that she was at one with the women of other parts of the country, except the South—for, as Senator Hoar once remarked on the floor of the Senate, as a preliminary to a ferocious attack on the South, it is the Southerners alone, in this country, who have the habit of command. Annette Crane, however, although she could no more manage her household staff of one maid-of-all-work than Mrs. James Brentwood Baldwin or Mrs. Hill-Smith could manage her retinue of English flunkeys and French maids, yet, by tact and judgment, succeeded in keeping the maid-of-all-work within bounds—which is more than the Brentwood Baldwins and the Hill-Smiths could do with their maids and flunkeys.
On the journey with Thorndyke, not one word had passed Annette's lips to indicate any rift between her husband and herself. She spoke of him frankly and affectionately. But the two children
