She subscribed to each new "Mothers' Helper," and the like, that she came across, devouring each and every one with an eagerness that was tempered only by a vague uneasiness at finding so many differences of opinion among Those Who Knew.
Undeniably Billy, if not Bertram, was indeed realizing the Enormous Responsibility, and was keeping ever before her the Important Trust.
In June Bertram took a cottage at the South Shore, and by the time the really hot weather arrived the family were well settled.

It was only an hour away from Boston, and easy of access, but William said he guessed he would not go; he would stay in Boston, sleeping at the house, and getting his meals at the club, until the middle of July, when he was going down in Maine for his usual fishing trip, which he had planned to take a little earlier than usual this year.
"But you'll be so lonesome, Uncle William," Billy demurred, "in this great house all alone!" "Oh, no, I sha'n't," rejoined Uncle William.

"I shall only be sleeping here, you know," he finished, with a slightly peculiar smile.
It was well, perhaps, that Billy did not exactly realize the significance of that smile, nor the unconscious emphasis on the word "sleeping," for it would have troubled her not a little.
William, to tell the truth, was quite anticipating that sleeping.
William's nights had not been exactly restful since the baby came.

His evenings, too, had not been the peaceful things they were wont to be.
Some of Billy's Rules and Tests were strenuously objected to on the part of her small son, and the young man did not hesitate to show it.

Billy said that it was good for the baby to cry, that it developed his lungs; but William was very sure that it was not good for _him_.