The Project Gutenberg eBook, When She Came Home from College, by Marian Hurd McNeely and Jean Bingham Wilson, Illustrated by George Gibbs

When She Came Home From College

When She Came Home From College

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HEL-LO, LITTLE GIRL

When She Came Home
From College

BY
MARIAN KENT HURD
AND
JEAN BINGHAM WILSON
With Illustrations by
George Gibbs

BOSTON AND NEW YORK
HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY
The Riverside Press Cambridge
1909

COPYRIGHT, 1909, BY MARIAN KENT HURD AND JEAN BINGHAM WILSON
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
Published October, 1909

Contents

Illustrations

When She Came Home
From College

CHAPTER I
ALMA MATER

“WELL, this is cheerful!” cried the Infant, as she stepped briskly into the room where the rest of the “Set” were dejectedly assembled. “What if this is the last night of college! What if our diplomas are all concealed in the tops of our top trays! Can’t this crowd be original enough to smile a little on our last evening, instead of looking like a country prayer-meeting?”

The Infant cast herself upon the cushionless frame of a Morris armchair, and grinned at the forms on the packing-boxes around her. Her eyes roved round the disorderly room, stripped of the pretty portières, cushions, mandolins, and posters, which are as inevitably a part of a college suite as the curriculum is a part of the college itself. Even the Infant suppressed a sigh as she caught sight of the trunks outside in the corridor.

“Tears, idle tears, I know not what they mean;

Tears from the depths of some divine despair,

Rise from the heart and gather to the eyes,

On looking at the—excelsior—on the floor,

And thinking of the days that are no more,”

she chanted.

“It’s all very well to talk in that unfeeling way, Infant,” said Knowledge, separating herself with difficulty from the embrace of the Sphinx and sitting up on the packing-box to address her chums to better advantage. “It’s very well to talk, but the fact remains that to-morrow we are all to be scattered to the four corners of the United States. And who knows whether we shall ever all be together again in our whole lives?” Knowledge forgot the dignity of her new A. B. and gulped audibly; while the Sphinx patted her on the back, and said nothing, as usual.

“Well!” retorted the Infant, rising, “if I am the youngest, I have more sense than the rest of you. I’ve kept my chafing-dish out of my trunk, and I’ve saved some sugar and alcohol and chocolate, and ‘borrowed’ some milk and butter from the table downstairs; because I knew something would be needed to revive this set, and I hadn’t the money to buy enough smelling-salts.”

The Infant ran down the corridor, and came back with her battered dish; and the girls gathered together on the dusty floor around the box, which now served as a table. Their faces, worn from the strain of the week of graduation, relaxed noticeably as the familiar odor began to float upon the air.

“This is comfortable,” sighed Barbara, gratefully. “Let me take the spoon, Infant. Your four years of college life have not yet A. B.’d you in fudge.”

“Oh, you are not quite crushed by the pangs of the coming separation, after all, then,” grinned the youngest member. “Girls, did you hear an awful chuckle when our Barbara finished her Commencement speech yesterday? It was I, and I was dreadfully ashamed.”

“Mercy, no!” cried Atalanta, turning shocked eyes at the offender. “What on earth did you chuckle for, when it was so sad?”

“That’s just it!” said the Irreverent Infant. “When Babbie began to talk of Life and Love and the Discipline of Experience and the Opportunities for Uplifting One’s Environment,—wasn’t that it, Babbie?—I began to wonder how she knew it all. Babbie has never loved a man in her life” (the Infant glanced sharply at Barbara’s clear profile); “Babbie has never had any experiences to be disciplined about; Babbie’s environment, which is we, girls, hasn’t been especially uplifted by any titanic efforts on her part; and as for Life, why, Babbie’s had only twenty-one years of it, and some of them were unconscious. So when her oration ended with that grand triumphant climax, and every one was holding her breath and looking awed and tearful, I was chuckling to think how beautifully Barbara was selling all those people.”

A horrified clamor arose from the girls.

“Why, Evelyn Clinton! It was lovely!”

“Infant, you shameless creature!”

With a whirl of her white skirts, amid the confusion that followed, the House Plant rose to her feet and the rescue of her chum. “Just because you can’t appreciate what a splendid mind Babbie has, Evelyn Clinton, and how much the English professors think of her, and what a prodigy she is, anyway—”

“Hear, hear!” cried Barbara, laughing.

“—And how proud we are of her,” went on the impetuous House Plant “Just because you have no soul is no reason why you should deny its possession by others!”

“Well, I’ve stirred you all up, anyway,” said the Infant, comfortably. “And that is all I wanted.”

Barbara took the spoon out of the fudge dreamily. “You may be right,” she said to the Infant. “You know I didn’t get the Eastman Scholarship.”

“Don’t you ever mention that odious thing again!” cried Atalanta. “You know that the whole class thinks you should have had it.”

Barbara turned her face aside to hide a momentary shadow.

“Well, in any case,” she said, “there is work ahead for me. Every one who anticipates a literary career must work hard for recognition.”

“You won’t have to,” declared the House Plant, hugging her chum, and followed by a murmur of assent from the floor. “Why, Babbie, didn’t you get five dollars from that Sunday-School Journal, and don’t they want more stories at the same rate? I think that is splendid!”

“I shall not write insipid little stories when I go home,” Barbara answered, smiling kindly down at the enthusiastic little devotee who had subsided at her feet “I shall write something really worth while,—perhaps a story which will unveil characters in all their complexity and show how they are swayed by all the different elements which enter into environment—”

“Ouch!” exclaimed the Infant “You are letting the fudge burn, and unveiling your characteristic of absent-mindedness to the set, who know it already. This stuff is done, anyway, and I’ll pour it out Or, no,—let’s eat it hot with these spoons.”

The Infant dealt out spoons with the rapidity of a dexterous bridge-player, and the girls burned their tongues in one second, and blamed their youngest in the next.

“By the way, Babbie,” suggested the Infant with a view to hiding speedily her second enormity, “you never told us the advice that New York editor gave you last week.”

Barbara’s scorn rose. “He was horrid,” she said. “He told me that an entering wedge into literary life was stenography in a magazine office. Imagine! He said that sometimes stenographers earned as much as twenty dollars a week. I told him that perhaps he had not realized that I was of New England ancestry and Vassar College, and that I was not wearing my hair in a huge pompadour, nor was I chewing gum.”

The others looked impressed.

“What did he reply?” asked the Infant.

“He said, ‘Dear me, I had forgotten the need of a rarefied atmosphere for the college graduate. I am sorry that I am no longer at leisure.’ And I walked out.”

“You did just right,” declared the House Plant, warmly, confirmed in her opinion by a murmur of assent from the girls.

“Right!” echoed the Infant. “Babbie, you are the dearest old goose in the world. You will never succeed nor make any money if you take an attitude like that.”

“I shall not write for money,” declared Barbara, beginning to pace the floor. “What is money, compared to accomplishment? I shall go home, shut myself up, and write, write, write—until recognition comes to me. I am sure it will come if I work and wait!”

She flung her head back with her usual independent gesture, and the crimson color rose in her cheeks. And the girls eyed, a little awesomely, this splendid prodigy, in whose powers they believed with that absolute, unquestioning faith which is found only in youth and college. The short silence was broken almost immediately by the Infant.

“Are you going to have a chance to write at home, undisturbed?” she asked. “Our house is a perfect Bedlam all the time. Two young sisters and a raft of brothers keep me occupied every minute.”

“There are four children younger than I, too,” answered Barbara. “But do you suppose that I am going to allow them to come between me and my life-work? It would not be right; and my mother would never permit it.”

“Mine would,” said the Infant, gloomily. “She thinks it is the mission of an elder sister to help manage those who have the luck to be younger and less responsible. I wish your mother could have come to graduation, Babbie. She might have converted my mother to her standpoint.”

“I wish she had come,” said Barbara, wistfully. “It seems as if she might have managed some way.”

Her mind flew back to the quiet little Western town,—a thousand miles away; to the household full of children, presided over by that serene, sweet-faced mother. Why could not that mother have left the children with some one, and have come to see her eldest daughter graduate “with honor”?

“What a splendid thing it is to have a real gift to develop, like Babbie’s,” sighed the House Plant.

Barbara looked uncomfortable. “You all have them,” she said. “I think I talk about mine more than the rest of you.”

“You may give us all presentation copies of your magnum opus,” announced the Infant, mercenarily. “You will come forth from your lair—I mean workroom—a dozen years hence, and find us all living happy, commonplace lives. The House Plant here will be fulfilling her name by raising six Peter Thompson children and embroidering lingerie waists. Atalanta,—by the way, girls, mother asked me why we called that very slow-moving girl Atalanta, and I told her I was ashamed to think that she should ask such a question,—well, Atalanta will marry that Yale individual who never took his eyes off her at Class-Day march. And I think you are mean not to tell us, Atalanta, when we know you’re engaged.”

The Infant threw a spoon at her blushing friend, who unexpectedly justified her nickname by dodging it.

“As for the Sphinx,” went on the Infant, happy in the unusual feat of holding the attention of the girls, “the poor Sphinx can’t get married because she never says enough for a man to know whether it’s yes or no. She will just keep on loving her pyramids and cones, and teaching algebraic riddles, until she dies. Knowledge will always look so dignified that she will frighten men away. Father exclaimed to me, when he met her, ‘What a lovely, calm, classical face!’ I said, ‘Yes, that is our Knowledge all over.’ And you can imagine how I felt when she opened those dignified lips of hers and remarked conversationally, ‘Say! Isn’t it hot as hot?’”

The girls laughed at poor Knowledge, and the cruel Infant continued to read the future.

“Well, all of us will get presentation copies of Bab’s great work, even I, who will be making home happy ‘if no one comes to marry me’”—

“‘And I don’t see why they should,’” finished Barbara, cuttingly. She rapped the Inspired Soothsayer on her fluffy head with a curtain-rod.

“Your mind runs on matrimony to a disgusting extent, Infant,” she warned. “I shall never marry unless I can carry on my writing.”

“And be a second Mrs. Jellyby?” inquired her friend. “All right; I’ll come to live with you and keep the little Jellybys out of the gravy while you unveil the characters of some Horace and Viola to the admiring world. Oh, girls! The fudge is gone, and it’s twelve o’clock, and even my eyelids will not stay apart much longer.”

The girls rose slowly from their improvised chairs, and stood together, half-unconsciously taking note of the dear, familiar room in its dismantled, unfamiliar condition. Out in the corridor a few unseen classmates began to sing,

“Gaudeamus igitur, juvenes dum sumus—”

“What on earth are they gaudeamusing about to-night?” growled the Infant; but no one answered her.

They stood looking at each other in silence.

“Some of you I won’t see again,” said Barbara, in a wavering voice. “My train goes so early. Dear, dear Sphinxy,—and Atalanta—”

An odd, snuffling sound caused her to look around. “The Infant’s crying!” she exclaimed.

The Infant threw her arms about Barbara’s neck. “I guess I have feelings,” she sobbed, “if I did try to make things cheerful. Don’t forget me, Babbie dear, for I do love you astonishingly, and expect great things from you.”

Barbara hurried blindly down the corridor, with the faithful House Plant beside her. At the end she turned, and faintly saw the four white figures still watching her. They were looking their last at their beloved companion, the girl whose strength of character and instinctive leadership had first attracted, then held them together, through four eventful years at college.

Barbara waved her handkerchief at the silent figures, and her head dropped on her room-mate’s shoulder as they neared their familiar door.

“Oh, Helen dear!” she sobbed. “How can we ever leave this college?”

CHAPTER II
HOME

THE Overland Passenger was clanking its way across the prairies of the middle West. Barbara, sitting on one of the stuffy red-plush seats, pressed her face against the window-pane, and looked out into the night. There was little to see,—the long, monotonous stretches of land, cloaked in shadows, with dim lights showing from a few farmhouses, and a wide expanse of sky, freckled with stars, above. But Barbara was nearing home, and the dull pain which had been with her since the last good-bys at college was forgotten, as her eyes drank in every familiar detail of the shadowy landscape. Above the purr and hiss of the engine sounded the jerky refrain of the rails, and the girl’s heart echoed the words.

“Near-home, near-home,” it throbbed.

The noise of the train deepened as the piers of a bridge flashed by. A porter with a lighted lantern passed through the car, and a traveling agent in the seat ahead began to gather up his hand-baggage. But Barbara still gazed out of the window, over the great piles of pine that marked the boundary of the Auburn lumber-yard, towards a dim light that shone down from the hill.

“Auburn, Auburn! This way out,” called the brakeman.

A thin, gray man stood at the steps of the car almost before the wheels ceased to move. His voice and his hands went up simultaneously.

“Hel-lo, little girl,” he said to Barbara.

“Dear old Dad!” said Barbara to him.

“We’ll have to trust to the livery,” said Dr. Grafton. “Maud S. has had a hard day, and I didn’t have the heart to have her harnessed again to-night.”

“There’s a rummage-sale hat,” laughed Barbara, as a driver in a shabby suit of livery and an ill-fitting top hat approached for her baggage checks.

Auburn knew naught of cabs. A “hack line,” including perhaps three dozen carriages which had passed beyond the wedding and funeral stage, attended passengers to and from the railway station. In a spirit of metropolitanism which seized the town at rare intervals, the proprietors of the “line” had decided to livery their drivers. So they had attended a rummage sale, given by the women members of an indigent church, and had purchased therefrom every top hat in sight, regardless of size, shape, or vintage. These they had distributed among their drivers in an equally reckless and care-free way. Auburn, as a whole, had not yet ceased to thrill with pride at her liveried service; but those of her inhabitants who happened to be blessed with a sense of humor experienced a sensation other than that of pride, upon beholding the pompous splendor of Banker Willowby’s last season’s hat held in place by the eyebrows of Peanuts Barker, or Piety Sanborn’s decorous beaver perched upon the manly brow of Spike Hannegan.

The mutual enjoyment of this other sensation renewed the old feeling of fellowship between Barbara and her father.

“It’s good to have you back, Girl,” he said.

Barbara crept a bit closer. “It’s good to be here,” she answered.

The Grafton house stood at the top of the longest hill in Auburn, and it was ten minutes more before the carriage stopped at the maple tree in front of the doctor’s home. The electric lights of Auburn, for economical reasons, were put out upon the arrival of the moon, and it was still and dark when the two started up the walk together. The stars hung low near the horizon, a sleepy bird was talking to himself in the willow tree, and the air was full of the bitter-sweet of cherry blossoms. A little gray, shaggy dog came bounding over the terrace to meet them, and the doorway was full of children’s heads.

Barbara’s mother stood on the front porch. Her eyes were soft and full, and her face was the glad-sorry kind. She did not say a word, only opened her arms, and the girl went in.

The children’s greetings were characteristic. Eighteen-year-old Jack added a hearty smack to his “Hello, Barb”; David laid a pale little cheek against his sister’s glowing one; and the Kid thrust his school report into Barbara’s hand, and inquired in eager tones what gifts were forthcoming. Only one member of the family circle was absent.

“Gassy’s gone to bed,” exclaimed Jack. “She’s got a grouch.”

“I have not,” retorted an aggressive voice. “Hello, Barbara.” A thin little girl of eleven, in a nightgown, her head covered with bumps of red hair wrapped about kid-curlers, seized Barbara from behind. There was a vigorous hug, which sent a thrill of surprise to the big sister’s heart, and Gassy became her own undemonstrative self again.

“Gee, you ought to see how you look!” said Jack.

“You ought not, ’cause ’twould make you unhappy,” retorted Gassy.

“I should think you’d feel unhappy, sleeping on that tiara of bumps. Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown. You look just like a tomato-worm.”

“Careful, Jack,” cautioned his father.

But the warning came too late. The small girl rushed at her tormentor, leapt upon him, and thrust a cold little hand inside of his gray sweater.

“There, there, children, don’t squabble before Barbara; she’s forgotten that you are not always friends,” said Mrs. Grafton. “Run back to bed, Cecilia; you’ll take cold. The rest of us are going, too. It’s long past bedtime.”

Barbara had expected to find the first nights away from her college room lonely ones; but the big four-poster, ugly as it had always seemed to her, was an improvement upon the cot that was a divan by day and a bed by night. Blessed, too, was the silence that was almost noisy, out-of-doors, and the good-night pat of the mother, as she tucked her firstling in. It was good, after all, to be at home, and good, too, that she could be of use there. Her last thought was of the new green carpet in the sitting-room below.

“It’s an outrage on æsthetics, that shade,” she said to herself. “I wish mother hadn’t bought it until I got home. They do need me here.”

“It’s the same old place,” said Barbara, at four o’clock the next afternoon, “the same dear, old, sleepy place. Aside from the fact that I find some more tucks let down in gowns and some more inches added to trousers each year, I don’t think Auburn changes anything—even her mind—from going-away time to coming-home time. Procrastination is the spice of life, here.”

“The things that keep a town awake are usually sent away to college,” said her mother, slyly. “But Auburn is solid, as well as conservative.”

“It’s pitifully, painfully solid,” said Barbara. “If it only realized its own deficiencies, there would be hope for it. But it is always so complacent and contented with itself. The road that leads up the hill to Dyer’s Corner is characteristic of the whole town. Some man with plenty of time on his hands—or for his feet—ambled along up the hill in the beginning of things, and for fifty years the people have followed his long, devious path, rather than branch out and originate another easier. I believe that any sign of progress, civic or intellectual, would cut Auburn to the quick,—if there is any quick to cut, in the town.”

“Haven’t you noted the fine schedule on our electric-car line?” laughed her mother.

“That’s just what I was thinking of. I commented on the improved time that the cars make to Miss Bates, this morning. To my surprise she stiffened at once. ‘You ain’t the first to make complaint,’ she said. ‘There ain’t no need of running a street-car like a fire-engine; and they say that since this new schedule has been fixed, the conductors won’t deliver dinner-pails to the factory men, or hold the car for you while you go on a short errand. Auburn ain’t going to tolerate that.’ Doesn’t that sound just like Miss Bates, and like Auburn?”

“That’s right; run down Auburn,” said Jack, tossing his strap of school-books on a chair, and hanging his cap on the rubber-plant. “You’ll make yourself good and popular if you go about expressing opinions like that in public. Auburn was good enough for Airy Fairy Lilian in high-school days, but having received four years of ‘culchaw,’ and a starter on the alphabet to add to her name, the plebeian ways of the old home-place jar her nerves. I like your loyalty, Mistress Barbara!”

“That is totally uncalled for, Jack,” said Barbara. “I like Auburn as much as you do. But it’s not an intellectual affection. I can’t help seeing, in spite of my love for it, that the town is raw and Western,—and painfully crude.”

“An intellectual affection! That’s as bad as a hygienic plum-pudding,” groaned Jack. “If I didn’t have to go out to coach the football team in five minutes, I would sit down and express my sympathy at the stultifying life which you must lead for the next sixty years. Unless, of course, we marry you off. There is always that alternative.”

“I hope you are going to be contented, dear,” said Mrs. Grafton, as her tall son relieved the rubber-plant of its burden, and clattered noisily out of the room. “I realize that after four years of the jolly intercourse you have had with the girls, and the growing college life, we must seem slow and prosaic to you here; nothing much happens when you are away. Of course, I don’t miss things as much as you will. I’m used to the old slow way, and besides, I’m too busy to have time to think of what is lacking. But I don’t want you to be hungry for what is not. The happiest thing I’ve had to think about all these four years, has been your home-coming, but I’ve been a little worried about your coming, sometimes. Do you think you are going to be contented with us?”

Barbara’s answer was judicial. “Why, yes, I think so,” she said. “Of course I shall miss the college life, and the intellectual stimulus I had there, but I’m going to work hard, too. All the theories I learned at Vassar are just ready to be put into practice, and I have so much to give the world that I can hardly wait to take my pen in hand. Oh, I am so glad, mother, that my life-work is laid out for me. I tell you frankly that I never could stand living in Auburn if I were not busy. The sordidness of the workers, and the pettiness of the idlers, would make me desperate. But I shall go to work at once, and write—write—all the things I have been longing to give utterance to for four years.”

“But you can’t write all the time,” said Mrs. Grafton.

“No, I don’t intend to. There are other things to do. There has never been any organized philanthropy in Auburn, and there is plenty of work for somebody in that line. I hope, too, that I may fall in with some congenial people who will care to do some regular, systematic study with me,—though I suppose they will be hard to find in a town of this size. Then, too, I thought that I might help Susan.”

Mrs. Grafton’s busy needle flew as she talked. “How, dear?”

“Oh, in her studies. Susan and I kept together in high-school days, and I think that it has always been a tragedy in her life that she couldn’t have a college education. She has a fine mind,—not original, you know, but clear-thinking,—and she loves study. Poor girl, I can help her so much. And of course it will be a mental stimulus to me, too.”

“I’m afraid Susan won’t have time.”

“Why, what is she doing?”

“Housework,” replied her mother. “She is cooking, and caring for her father and brothers, and she does it well, too.”

“What a shame!”

“What, to do it well?”

“You know what I mean, you wicked mother. A shame to let all that mental ability go to waste, while the pots and pans are being scoured. It doesn’t take brains to do housework.”

“Doesn’t it!” sighed Mrs. Grafton; “I find, all the time, that it takes much more than I possess. When it comes to the problems of how to let down Cecilia’s tucks without showing, how to vary the steak-chops diet that we grow so tired of, and how to decrease the gas-bills, I feel my mental inferiority. I’m glad that you have come home with new ideas; we need them, dear.”

A voice rose from the foot of the stairs below,—a shrill soprano voice, that skipped the scale from C to C, and back again to A.

“That’s Ellen,” said Mrs. Grafton, laying down her sewing with a sigh. “I can’t teach her to come to me when she wants me. She says that she doesn’t mind messages if she can ‘holler ’em,’ but she ‘won’t climb stairs fer Mrs. Roosevelt herself.’ I suppose I’ll have to go down.”

“What does she want?”

“That’s what makes it interesting: you never know. Perhaps an ironing-sheet, or the key to the fruit-closet. Maybe the plumber has come, or the milkman is to be paid, or the telephone is ringing. Or possibly a book-agent has made his appearance. She always keeps it a mystery until I get down.”

“I don’t see how on earth you live in that way. I never could get anything done.”

“I don’t accomplish much,” sighed her mother. “The days ought to be three times as long, to hold all the things they bring to be done. My life is like the mother’s bag in the ‘Swiss Family Robinson.’”

“I can’t work that way,” said Barbara. “It’s ruinous to any continuity of thought. I suppose that means that I’ll have to shut myself up in my room to write.”

Mrs. Grafton had gone downstairs.

“I don’t see how mother can stand it,” said the girl to herself. “Two telephone calls, an interview with the butcher, a stop to tie up David’s finger, a hunt for father’s lost letter, some money to be sent down to the vegetable man, and two calls to the front door,—that makes eight interruptions in the last hour. If she would only systematize things, so she wouldn’t be disturbed, she wouldn’t look so tired as she does. There ought not to be so much work in this house.”

She glanced around the big, homey-looking living-room, through the door into the narrow, old-fashioned hall, and beyond, into the sunny dining-room. The house was an old one; the furnishing, though comfortable, showed the signs of hard usage and disorder. An umbrella reposed on the couch, Jack’s football mask lay on the table, and her mother’s ravelings littered the floor. A heterogeneous collection of battered animals occupied the window-sill, and a pile of the doctor’s memoranda was thrust under the clock.

“I don’t wonder that things stray away here,” she added, “with no one to pick them up but mother. She ought to insist upon orderliness from each member of the family, and save herself. I’m afraid that her over-work is partly her own fault.”

“Another mishap,” said her mother, as she picked up her sewing on entering the room. “The gas-stove this time. Ellen can’t make it burn, and I’ve had to telephone the gas-man. Her baking is just under way, too, and I’ll have to send out for some bread for supper. I hate to ask you to do it, dear, this first day, but I’m afraid that Jack won’t be back in time to go.”

“Where shall I go? To Miss Pettibone’s?”

“Yes; my purse is on the table. Get a loaf of bread and some cookies, and anything else that would be good for supper. The meal is likely to be a slim one.”

Miss Pettibone’s tiny front room took the place of a delicatessen shop in Auburn. She was a little, brown, fat acorn of a woman, who had been wooed in her unsuspicious middle age by a graceless young vagabond, who had brightened her home for six weeks and then departed, carrying with him the little old maid’s heart, and the few thousand dollars which represented her capital. She was of the type of woman who would feel more grief than rage at such faithlessness, and she refused to allow her recreant lover to be traced. After the first shock was over, she turned to her one accomplishment as a means of livelihood, and produced for sale such delicious bread, such delectable tarts, such marvelous cakes and cookies, that all Auburn profited by the absence of the rogue. She did catering in a small way, and sometimes, as an especial favor, serving; and the sight of Miss Pettibone in a stiff white apron, with a shiny brass tray under her arm, going into a side entrance, was as sure a sign of a party within, as Japanese lanterns on the front porch, or an order for grapefruit at the grocer’s. The tragedy of her life had not embittered her, and all the grief that she had stirred into her cakes was as little noticeable in the light loaves as the evidences of sorrow in her intercourse with the world. Optimism was the yeast of her hard little life, and had raised her to the soundness and sweetness of her own bread.

There was no one in the shop as Barbara swung the door open and set a-jingle the bell at the top. But there was encouragement in the sight of a spicy gingerbread, some small yellow patty-cakes, some sugary crullers, and a pot of brown baked beans, in the glass-covered counter. Miss Pettibone came bustling into the room at the sound of the bell.

“Why, Barbara Grafton,” she said delightedly; “you, of all people! When did you get back?”

“Last night,” answered Barbara.

“Well, I declare! If I’m not glad to see you! You haven’t changed a mite,—even to get taller. I guess you’ve got your growth now. You spindled a good deal while you was stretching, but you seem to be fleshing up now.”

“I’m always a vulgarly healthy person,” said Barbara. “But how about you? How is the rheumatism?”

“It’s in its place when the roll is called. I’ve had a lame shoulder all spring.”

“I’m sorry about that.”

“Well, you don’t need to be. That’s one of the things that make dying easy. Providence was pretty kind when she began to invent aches and pains. Just think how hard it would be to step off, if you had to go when you was perfect physically. But that ain’t the usual way, thank goodness! All of the rheumatic shoulders, and bad backs, and poor sights, and failing memories, are just stones that pave the road to dying. I guess that’s what St. Paul meant when he said, ‘We die daily.’ But you don’t look as though you had begun, yet.”

“College food seems to agree with me, Miss Pettibone, but it’s not like your baking. I’ve come for a loaf of bread, and to carry off that pot of beans.”

“You can have the bread, child, but not the beans; they was sold hours ago.”

“Too bad,” sighed Barbara. “Give me the gingerbread.”

“I’m sorry, but that’s sold, too.”

“Why do you keep them, then?”

“I always ask my customers to leave them, if they ain’t in any hurry for them. It keeps my shop full, and besides, it makes folks that come in late see what they’ve missed. I notice that the minute a sold sign goes on a thing, it raises its value with most people. Barbara, it does my heart good to see you back again.”

“I’m glad to be back, too. How much are the little cakes?”

“Are you, my dear? Well, I’m glad to hear you say so. Twenty cents a dozen. Do you want them right away? You see, going away from home spoils lots of young folks, these days. Sending ’em away is like teaching them to tell time when they’re children. Of course it’s a matter of education, but after that they’re always on the outlook to see if the clock is fast or slow. And most of the young people who go away to college find it pretty slow in Auburn. I’m glad that you ain’t going to be discontented.”

Barbara looked guilty. She did not want to accept undeserved praise, and yet it was hard to be frank without being impolite.

“Of course I expect to miss college life, Miss Pettibone,” she began.

“Dear me, yes. I know what that will mean to you. Why, after I came back from Maine, twenty years ago, I was as lonesome for sea-air as though it had been a person. To this day I long for the tang of that salt wind. That’s why I use whale-oil soap—because the smell of the suds reminds me of the sea. Of course you’re going to miss college, Barbara.”

“I shall try to keep so busy that I won’t have time to be lonely,” said Barbara.

“That’s the right spirit. It won’t be hard to do, either, in your house. Your family is a large one, and your mother is put to it to do everything. Gassy ain’t old enough yet to be of much help, and it’s easier to keep a secret than a girl, in Auburn. I guess she’ll be glad to have you here to pitch in. It’s a good thing that you like housework.”

“I’m afraid I don’t know much about it. Housekeeping is not my forte. Of course I shall help mother, but I don’t intend to do that kind of work to the exclusion of all other. I intend to save the best of myself for my writing.”

Miss Pettibone looked properly awed.

“Well, it’s a wonderful thing to be able to write. I always said that you’d be an authoress, when I used to see those school compositions of yours that the ‘Conservative’ used to print. Why, Barbara, you come in here once when you was in Kindergarten school, and you set down on my front window-sill, and you says, ‘Miss Pettibone,’ you says, ‘I’ve written a pome.’ And I says, ‘Good fer you, Barbara, let’s hear it.’ So you smoothed down your white apron, and recited it to me. ‘It’s about my mother,’ you says; ‘and this is it:—

‘Oh, Mrs. Grafton,’ said Miss Gray,

‘Oh, do your children run away?’

‘Oh, no,’ said she, ‘they never do;

Because I always use my shoe.’

Then when you was through you explained to me that your ma didn’t really whip you. You just had to put in that part about the shoe to make it rhyme, you said. You was an awful old-fashioned child, Barbara!”

“My poetry was of about the same quality then that it is now,” laughed Barbara. “I’ll take the bread and the cakes with me, Miss Pettibone. This is like old Auburn days. I haven’t carried a loaf of bread on the street since I left home.”

“Well, paper bundles with the steam rising from them ain’t very swell, but sometimes the insides makes it worth while,” said the little baker. “Come in and see me often, Barbara, when it ain’t an errand. And give my love to your mother. She hasn’t been looking well lately, seems to me.”

Barbara smiled her good-by, and the little bell jingled merrily as the door swung shut.

“It’s always good to see Miss Pettibone,” she said to herself as she started up the quiet street. “She belongs in a story-book,—a little felt one with cheery red covers. It is queer about her, too. She is as provincial as any one in Auburn, and yet she is never commonplace.”

At the corner she encountered another of the characters of Auburn. This was Mrs. Kotferschmidt, the old German woman, whose husband had been for years the proprietor of the one boat-livery of the town. He had died during the past winter, and Barbara, meeting the widow, stopped to offer her condolences. The old boatman had taught her to swim and to row, and her expressions of sympathy were genuine.

“Mother wrote me about your loss,” she said. “I was so sorry to hear about Mr. Kotferschmidt.”

The old lady rustled in her crape, but the stolid face in the black bonnet showed no sign of emotion.

“Oh, you don’t need to mind that,” she said politely. “He was getting old, anyways. In the spring I hired me a stronger man to help me mit the boats.”

Mrs. Kotferschmidt was the only passer Barbara met on her way home. Chestnut Street was practically deserted. The school-children’s procession had passed, and the business-men’s brigade had not yet started to move. The shaded avenue, with its green arch of trees overhead, stretched its quiet, leisurely way from Miss Pettibone’s shop to the Grafton house. A shaft of red sun cut its way through the thick leaves, and covered with a glorified light the square, substantial houses that bordered the road. A few children played upon the street, a dog was taking an undisturbed siesta on the sidewalk, and three snowy pigeons were cooing softly as they strutted along the gutter. It was all pretty and peaceful, but quiet, desperately quiet. Barbara’s thoughts went back to the college campus, crowded with chattering students, leisurely professors, hurrying messenger-boys, and busy employees, and full of activity at this hour. What if the Sphinx could see her now, or the Infant, or the dear House Plant, with that plebeian loaf of bread under her arm, on that deserted Western road? She knew what they would say; she could almost feel their glances of pity. Oh, it was a misfortune to be born in a place like Auburn,—a stultifying, crude, middle-western town. She choked down a lump in her throat that threatened her.

“I must get to work,” she thought. “Soon,—soon! I shall never be able to exist in Auburn, if I give myself time to think about it.”

CHAPTER III
THE THEORY OF PHILOSOPHY

IT was eight o’clock on a warm morning in June, a few days after Barbara’s return. She rose from the table, where she had been breakfasting in solitude, and sought her mother.

It was not easy to find her. The girl looked into the kitchen, passed through her father’s office, and ran upstairs to Mrs. Grafton’s chamber—all without result.

“Jack!” she called, stopping at the door of her brother’s room, and severely regarding the recumbent figure in bed. “Jack! I’d be ashamed of lying in bed so late! Where’s mother?”

A muffled groan, a tossing of the long swathed figure—and silence.

“Jack! Tell me at least, if you know where she is.”

The swathed figure rose up in majesty, and a pair of half-open, sleepy eyes became visible in a yawning face.

“Well, I’ll be hanged!” said Jack. “If you didn’t actually wake me up to ask where mother is. What do you think I am! A supernatural dreamer, with visions of everything mother does floating around my bed? Think I can see all over the house with my eyes shut?”

Jack flounced back, and recomposed his long limbs for slumber.

“You ought to be up, anyway, by this time,” declared Barbara, eyeing him with cold disapproval. “There are plenty of things that you could do to help.”

She walked down the stairs, puzzling over the strange lack of system that she saw everywhere about her. There was Jack, lying at his ease in his room, with a superb disregard of responsibilities. She caught a glimpse of Gassy sitting in the dusty, disorderly library, reading the story from which she had been forcibly separated the evening before at bedtime. And finally, as she reëntered the dining-room, she stumbled over the Kid, who was arranging plates, taken from the uncleared dining-table, in a neat line on the carpet.

“Don’t upset my ships!” he roared, as Barbara unconsciously crunched a butter-plate under her erring tread.

She stared in horror at the débris; then, sweeping the plates up, to the accompaniment of shrieks from the youngest Grafton, she sat down on a chair and took her struggling little brother on her lap.

“Charles Grafton, listen to me!” she said firmly but not angrily, remembering the pedagogic articles on “Anger and the Child,” and the extracts which had filled a large college note-book. “Charles! What do you mean by doing such a dreadful thing as this? Answer, immediately.”

It was while she was trying to understand his stormy articulations that Mrs. Grafton appeared, and sank down wearily in a chair near the door. The Kid immediately wriggled from his sister and ran to his mother, weeping.

“Just see what this boy has done!” cried Barbara. “I picked up half these plates from the floor. I never saw such a child! This table ought to have been cleared long ago, anyway.”

“Ellen can’t clear the table until breakfast is over,” said Mrs. Grafton, soothing the little boy in her arms. “Your father, Cecilia, Charles, and I had our breakfast as usual at quarter after seven. I imagine that Ellen was waiting for you to finish. Moreover, the gas-man came to look at the meter in the cellar, and she and I both went down with him. I just came up from there.”

Mrs. Grafton’s face settled into weary lines, and she sighed heavily. But Barbara did not notice. She was looking at the new egg-stain on the Wilton rug.

“Mother,” she said, in her fresh, energetic voice, “I really do think things might be managed more systematically here than they actually are. You know that, if there is one thing that we learn at college, it is the need of system. Now see here!” Barbara rose, and began to pace back and forth over the egg-stain. “We rise at six-thirty, an absurdly early hour, though perhaps necessitated by the work of a large family—”

“Yes,” interposed her mother, smiling through her pallor. “We all rise at half-past six.”

Barbara flushed. “Now, mother!” she said. “I know I haven’t done it these few days since I came home, but that was accidental. It shall not happen again. And Jack is dreadful about getting up!”

“Well,” said Mrs. Grafton, “this ‘system’?”

“Oh, yes. We should rise and finish breakfast by quarter-past eight. Then let Ellen do the dishes, of course, and all the work in the kitchen. Then make Jack get up and do the outside work, the lawns, sweeping the porches, and so forth, to get it out of the way early. Cecilia,—how I hate that nickname Gassy!—Cecilia ought to do her share. She should be taught to keep her room in order, and the library too, I think.”

“I won’t!” shouted an excitable little voice from the next room.

“Don’t talk that way, Cecilia,” called Barbara. “You’ll never improve, if you don’t do something in this world.”

“Why don’t you do something, then?” retorted the voice, “instead of telling mother how to run the house?”

A smile flickered upon Mrs. Grafton’s pale face, and died in another sigh. Barbara rose and shut the dining-room door.

“Now I”—she resumed—“I will guarantee to keep the lower floor looking fresh and clean,—not doing the sweeping, of course; and I will take care of my own room and Jack’s also. That will probably occupy me until half-past nine, after which I must spend my time until twelve in writing every minute, undisturbed. In this way, you see, we shall each have our own individual work,—David and the Kid being allowed to play,—and your burden will be considerably lessened. And all through a little application of system.”

“System!” echoed her mother, mechanically allowing Charles to slip from her lap.

“Yes,” said Barbara. “That leaves your room and David’s and the ordering for you.”

“My room, and David’s, and the ordering,” repeated Mrs. Grafton.

“Why, yes,” Barbara responded, looking curiously at her mother. “What is the matter, dear? You look so queer and white. Aren’t you well?”

“Oh, yes,” replied Mrs. Grafton. “Here is Susan coming to see you. Keep her out on the porch, Barbara, there is so much to do in the house.”

Left alone, Mrs. Grafton’s eyes filled, and her lips began to twitch nervously. “So much to do!” she repeated. She put her handkerchief up to her shaking lips. “What am I crying for?” she asked herself sternly. “I never used to be so foolish.” But her eyes kept filling and her lips twitching. She had a feeling that she was allowing herself to be weak. Then a sense of hopelessness in a domestic universe seemed to rise up and overwhelm her, and she wept again.

Suddenly she rose and hurried from the room, as she caught the sound of Jack’s boots on the stairs.

“I’m so glad to see you!” cried Barbara, pushing forward the best porch-chair to receive her guest. “And I’m especially glad that you came so early, for I shall be inaccessible after ten o’clock. My literary hours begin then.”

Susan fanned herself. “I just stopped a minute on my way to get some sewing-silk,” she said, “but I couldn’t help trying to get a glimpse of you again. How fresh and at leisure you look, Babbie. All your work done so soon?”

“No-o,” answered Barbara, a slight blush making her confession charming. “The fact is, Sue, I got up later than usual this morning, for some reason, and mother and I have been taking our time in discussing a new system of housekeeping, by which I am to lighten mother’s labors considerably.”

Susan looked wistful as she rocked back and forth. “I suppose your college training makes you accommodate yourself to all circumstances,” she said. “It must be hard to have to come to every-day living like this, after all the advantages you have had. I believe you know enough theory to fit into any situation.”

“Oh, no,” interposed Barbara, “not every one.”

“And all these four years,” went on Susan, her sweet face sobering, “I have just been doing housework, and trying to take dear mother’s place. My life has been bounded by dishpans and darning-cotton, and my associates have been housemaids and dressmakers. I haven’t improved at all.”

“Now you are fishing!” rejoined Barbara. “I must say, Susan, that as for not being a college girl, you show it less than any other girl I ever saw.”

“You flatter me,” declared Susan. “And oh, Barbara, I want to say that it’s awfully sweet of you to be willing to read with me an hour every day. It will help me ever so much, to get your trained point of view about things. I am so immature in my mental judgments, I know.”

“I am only too glad to help you,” said Barbara, heartily. “And really, Sue, you are a godsend to me, for you are the only girl in town that is congenial to me at all.”

Susan looked pleased. “That’s kind of you,” she answered. “Well, I must not keep you from helping your mother. By the way, how is she to-day? Everybody is saying how tired and worn out she looks, and is glad that you have come to share her burdens.”

“Why, mother’s all right,” replied Barbara. “How people will talk and gossip about nothing! Good-by, Sue dear. Take some roses on the way out. And let’s begin reading to-morrow.”

She paused a moment on the porch, looking with appreciative eyes at the pretty lawn, with its wealth of gay-colored nasturtiums and roses. As she passed through the hall, her eyes fell upon Gassy, still curled up in the chair, and absorbed in her book.

“Cecilia!” called Barbara, with all the authority of an elder sister. “You have done nothing all morning. Take the duster and dust the living-room immediately.”

The little girl’s legs kicked convulsively in protest. “Oh-h, how I hate you, Barbara!” she cried abstractedly. “I’ve only eight pages more.”

“Nearly ten o’clock!” sighed the girl, as she mounted the stairs to her room. “I shan’t get much done to-day.”

She made her bed with resigned patience, pinned an “Engaged” sign on her door, and fell to work. But even through the closed door came the busy sounds of an active household. A thump, thump, thump of the furniture downstairs in the living-room proclaimed that a vigorous sweeping was going on; the maddening click-click-clash outside drew her to the window to behold Jack sulkily guiding the lawn-mower. Just below her came the measured hum of the sewing-machine, and Barbara remembered, with a guilty start, that she had promised to finish those sheets herself, the day before. Finally, the sound of a toy drum and the martial tramp of little feet in the hall outside her door nerved her to action.

“What are you doing, children?” she cried, putting her head out through the door in despair.

David and the Kid stopped marching simultaneously, and eyed their big sister. “I’m Teddy Roosevelt,” said David, mildly, “and the Kid is all my Rough Riders.”

“Well, you must not ride here,” declared Barbara. “You are disturbing me and I can’t write. Go downstairs and play,—right away. You must not annoy me again.”

She shut her door, cutting a yell from the Kid into two sections. The martial sounds died away, and she was free to resume her thoughts. Their continuity seemed broken, however. It was some time before she took up her work again.

About an hour afterwards, as Barbara, with pleased expression and a flying pen, was half way through an enthusiastically philosophic peroration, she was disturbed by a sudden jar, as if some heavy weight had fallen, shaking her chair considerably. In a minute, footsteps sounded outside again, and some one timidly opened her door. It was David.

“Mother—” he began.

“I cannot be disturbed!” cried Barbara, frantically, waving her pen. “Run away, David; I simply must not be talked to!”

The little fellow, with a scared look, obeyed, and Barbara was once more left alone. It was not the conglomeration of sounds which now annoyed her,—it was the utter absence of the noises to which she had grown accustomed. The hum of the sewing-machine had abruptly ceased, and a sudden cry of “Jack, come here, quick!” had stopped the teasing whir of the grass-cutter. To Barbara there was something ominous in the sudden cessation.

“Well, it’s nearly twelve, anyway,” she exclaimed, shutting up her desk. “I’ll give up for this morning.”

She opened her door and went downstairs. No one in the halls; no one in the living-room. She turned toward the kitchen, but was arrested by the sound of her father’s voice coming from the sewing-room,—his voice, but strange, low, unnatural.

“There, Jack! That’s enough water. Slowly, Ellen. Stop crying, Charles. Mother’s all right.”

Barbara reached the door in one bound. “What—” she began, and stopped, while her shocked eyes took in the scene before her.

In a frightened, huddled group near her stood Gassy, David, and the Kid, staring at their mother, who lay on the floor perfectly quiet. Jack and Ellen stood by, with water and cloths, and the doctor was gently sponging away the blood from a cut on Mrs. Grafton’s temple. No one spoke to Barbara or noticed her.

As she crossed over, brushing the children from her path, her father looked up and saw the alarmed look on her face. “Your mother fainted, that’s all,” he said reassuringly. “She fell from the sewing-machine and cut herself. But she will be all right soon!”

Mrs. Grafton opened her eyes and faintly smiled.

“O mother dear!” cried Barbara. “O mother! It is my fault! I said I would do those sheets yesterday.”

Mrs. Grafton began to cry. “I don’t want to hear about sheets,” she sobbed weakly.

“No, dear, no, dear, you needn’t,” soothed the doctor, motioning Barbara away.

It was a new sensation to Barbara to stand back, while the doctor carried Mrs. Grafton upstairs to her room, and, aided only slightly, put her to bed. Mechanically she did as ordered, and followed her father out of the room, when her mother had fallen asleep, with a feeling that the end of the world had come, and that “system” had deserted the universe.

“Yes, it is a nervous break-down,” said the doctor, throwing himself into an easy-chair in the living-room. “I might have known that it would come, with the crushing weight of this household on her delicate shoulders. But your mother is so brave and bright that I didn’t realize what she has been doing.”

“And of course I’ve been away,” sighed Barbara.

“Well, she must go away now,” said Dr. Grafton, with determination. “A complete rest and change she must have, as soon as possible. And Barbara, my girl, you’ll have to take the helm.”

“Oh, I will,” she cried confidently. “I can and will gladly. I won’t let it crush me. I’ll reduce it all to a science.”

“H’m,” said her father. “This science is not taught at Vassar. However, I don’t see what else we can do. And your mother must go at once.”

Barbara lost her sense of the logical continuity of events during the next few days. Packing, planning, consoling small brothers, encouraging her mother, who was inclined to rebellion,—the minutes and hours flew. Before she realized, she stood one morning on the front porch with her arms around the sobbing Kid, resolutely forcing a smile, while she waved a cheerful farewell to the departing phaeton, containing a very pale mother and a very determined-looking father.

“Good-by, mother dear!” called little David, winking away his tears. “Come back soon.”

“Come back well!” added Barbara, cheerfully.

CHAPTER IV
THE PRACTICE