t unforgivable of feminine failings, ranking
equally with the other extreme, of which poor, pretty, helpless Mrs.
Prescott was an example.

"So you want to work your way through college? What's the idea?" he
asked a bit gruffly. "A pretty girl like you, I should think, would
only be planning to marry and settle down in a home of her own."

Nancy colored.

"That would be awfully nice, but one can't make it a business, Uncle
Thomas, or all the niceness would go out of it. I think one ought to
plan out all the difficult things, and leave all the--the dreadfully
nice things to Chance, or Providence,--or--well, just let them happen
where they belong."

"You're a little Madame Solomon, aren't you, eh?" said Uncle Thomas
with a short chuckle. "And how are you going to work your way through
college? I shouldn't think that Miss Leland's would be exactly the
place for a young lady with your ideas."

"It wouldn't be, if I aired them all over the place--but I've learned
to keep my ideas to myself," said Nancy, thinking how Mildred Lloyd
would scoff at her "highbrow" ambitions. Uncle Thomas shot a quick,
keen glance at her from under his bushy brows.

"Well, you are a wise young lady. Now, who in the world taught you
that--to keep your ideas to yourself? Eh?"

"Why, there's nothing very wise in that," said Nancy, surprised at his
tone of warm approval. "I know what I want, and if I'm with people who
think it's a foolish thing to want, why, I don't talk about it--that's
all."

"Well, my dear, permit me to say that I think that in time you are
going to have even more sense than my good Elizabeth."

"You--you aren't laughing at me, Uncle Thomas? Do you think I'm trying
to show off?" asked Nancy timidly, unwilling to believe his sincere
praise; and she looked anxiously and shyly into his face to detect a
smile if there was one. But there wasn't.

"Laughing at you? My dear child--what nonsense! Bless my soul, but
you are certainly my boy's daughter!"

Then, after a short silence, and just as Nancy was on the point of
telling him an amusing little incident about Charlotte, he interrupted
her abruptly and irrelevantly:

"I say,--you like that young man, eh?"

"What young man?" gasped Nancy, turning scarlet.

"_That_ young man," repeated Uncle Thomas, pettishly. "Elizabeth's
boy--Arnold--that author-person."

"Author?"

"Yes. Bless me, didn't he tell you how famous he is? Do you like him,
I say?" Uncle