"I do wish she had some spunk," she muttered complainingly, not thinking that Evadna might hear her.

"She don't take after the Ramseys none--there wasn't anything mushy about them that I ever heard of." "Mushy! MUSHY!" Evadna sat up and stared at nothing at all while she repeated the word under her breath.

"She wants me to be gentle--she preached gentleness in her letters, and told how her boys need it, and then--she calls it being MUSHY!" She reached mechanically for her hair-brush, and fumbled in a tumbled mass of shining, yellow hair quite as unbelievable in its way as were her eyes--Grant had shown a faculty for observing keenly when he called her a Christmas angel--and drew out a half-dozen hairpins, letting them slide from her lap to the floor.

"MUSHY!" she repeated, and shook down her hair so that it framed her face and those eyes of hers.

"I suppose that's what they all say behind my back.