comfort Leila has been to me, and the anxiety you have caused, I wonder
where you get your--your DEVILTRY from. I am posatively faint."

I was alarmed, for she did look queer, with her face all white around
the Rouge. So I reached for the Flask.

"I'll give you a swig of this," I said. "It will pull you around in no
time."

But she held me off feircely.

"Never!" she said. "Never again. I shall emty the wine cellar. There
will be nothing to drink in this house from now on. I do not know what
we are coming to."

She walked into the bathroom, and I heard her emptying the Flask down
the drain pipe. It was a very handsome Flask, silver with gold stripes,
and all at once I knew the young man would want it back. So I said:

"Mother, please leave the Flask here anyhow."

"Certainly not."

"It's not mine, mother."

"Whose is it?"

"It--a friend of mine loned it to me."

"Who?"

"I can't tell you."

"You can't TELL me! Barbara, I am utterly bewildered. I sent you away a
simple child, and you return to me--what?"

Well, we had about an hour's fight over it, and we ended in a
compromise. I gave up the Flask, and promised not to smoke and so forth,
and I was to have some new dresses and a silk Sweater, and to be allowed
to stay up until ten o'clock, and to have a desk in my room for my work.

"Work!" mother said. "Career! What next? Why can't you be like Leila,
and settle down to haveing a good time?"

"Leila and I are diferent," I said loftily, for I resented her tone.
"Leila is a child of the moment. Life for her is one grand, sweet Song.
For me it is a serious matter. `Life is real, life is earnest, and the
Grave is not its goal,'" I quoted in impasioned tones.

(Because that is the way I feel. How can the Grave be its goal? THERE
MUST BE SOMETHING BEYOND. I have thought it all out, and I beleive in a
world beyond, but not in a hell. Hell, I beleive, is the state of mind
one gets into in this world as a result of one's wicked Acts or one's
wicked Thoughts, and is in one's self.)

As I have said, the other side of the Compromise was that I was not to
carry Flasks with me, or drink any punch at parties if it had a stick
in it, and you can generally find out by the taste. For if it is what
Carter Brooks calls "loaded" it stings your tongue. Or if it tastes like
cider it's probably Champane. And I was not to smoke any cigarettes.

Mother was holding out on the Sweater at that time, saying that Sis had
a per