MRS.

WHITNEY INTERVENES As Hiram had always been silent and seemingly abstracted, no one but Ellen noted the radical change in him.

She had brought up her children in the old-fashioned way--her thoughts, and usually her eyes, upon them all day, and one ear open all night.

When she no longer had them to guard, she turned all this energy of solicitude to her husband; thus the passionate love of her youth was having a healthy, beautiful old age.

The years of circumventing the easily roused restiveness of her spirited boy and girl had taught her craft; without seeming to be watching Hiram, no detail of his appearance or actions escaped her.
"There's mighty little your pa don't see," had been one of her stock observations to the children from their earliest days.