large and airy, with four big windows, and a fireplace for chilly nights. When the first sketches arrived the room was plainly labelled in printed letters, and I remember that the mere word gave me a queer thrill of joy. I had, as you know, immediately made patterns of the nursery furniture, placed the paper crib in position, and estimated the number of steps from my bed to the baby's. I had had it beautifully planned for contagious diseases: Will could move into the guest-room, and I and the sick children could be absolutely isolated from the rest of the house, in two lovely rooms with a bathroom of our own. But I needn't have planned on children's contagious diseases. There will never be any little children with measles, or chicken-pox, or whooping-cough in our house, to take care of. I am sure of it now. On the last roll of plans which our architect submitted to us the word printed across the face of the southeast room had been changed from Nursery to Chamber! I think Will must have requested it and I knew then with awful finality that even Will had given up hope. I never asked how or why the room's name had been changed. I simply understood without asking and cried it out by myself in my room. The next day I burned the nursery paper furniture—the crib, the folding yard, the toy-case like Edith's—in the kitchen stove, with a pang as big as if they had been real.
After that I called the southeast chamber, "Ruth's room." I had always secretly hoped that Ruth would live with me if ever I had a house of my own. I had hoped it ever since Alec had married Edith. It hadn't come to pass—it never would. Ruth is so fastidious. But she has spent a night with me very
