“I can beat any boy at school running, mother,” said Archibald, watching his plate of soup hungrily as it travelled toward him.  “If my eyes won’t let me be captain of a football team, I’m going to become the champion runner in America.  I bet I can, if I try.”

“I shouldn’t wonder, dear.  It’s good for you, too.  I never saw you look better.”

He was a tall, thin boy, with a muscular figure, and thick brown hair, which was always rumpled.  Through his ugly spectacles his eyes showed large, dark, and as beautifully soft as a girl’s.  His mind was remarkably keen and active, and there was in his carriage something of Gabriella’s capable and commanding air, as if, like her, he embodied those qualities which compel acknowledgment.  Though she had never admitted it even to herself, he was her favourite child.

When dinner was over she had the children to herself—­to the gracious, unhurried self she gave them—­until ten o’clock.  Then their books were put away, and after she had kissed them good-night, and tucked the covers about them, she came back to the living-room, and sat down to her sewing with Miss Polly.  The ease and cheerfulness dropped from her at the approach of midnight, and while the two women bent over their needles they talked of their anxieties, and planned innumerable and intricate ways of economy.

“Fanny’s school costs so much, and, of course, she must have clothes.  All the other girls dress so expensively.”

“You spend three times as much on her as you do on Archibald.”

“I know,” her voice melted to the mother note, “but Archibald is different.  He is a man, and he will make his way in the world.  Then, too, his expenses will be trebled next year when he goes off to school, and after that, of course, will come college.  I don’t believe anything or anybody can keep Archibald back,” she went on proudly.  “Do you know he talks already of going to work in a shipping office in order to help me?”

“It’s a pity about his eyes.”

“There’s nothing wrong except near-sightedness, but he’ll have to wear glasses all his life.”

For a minute Miss Polly stitched almost furiously, while her small weatherbeaten face, with its grotesque features, was visited by an illumination that softened and ennobled its ugliness.  From living entirely in the lives of others, she had attained the spiritual serenity and detachment of a saint as well as the saint’s immunity from the intenser personal forms of suffering.  Long habit had accustomed her to think of herself only in connection with somebody’s need of her, and beyond this she hardly appeared as an individual existence even in her own secret reflections.  As far as it is possible to achieve absolute unselfishness in a world planned upon egoistic principles Miss Polly had achieved it; and the result was that she was almost perfectly happy.

“Fanny seems right set on goin’ down to Twenty-third Street, don’t she?” she inquired, after an interval of musing.