f-like Anne had shared with a whole brood of
sturdy cousins, and meant, "Please stop fooling; I want to be taken
seriously."

"I love to draw--but my people don't look alive, somehow," said little
Milly, wistfully.

Cried Anne: "Keep trying, Milly; there is nothing so lovely as to have
even a taste for some sort of creative work, and to develop it; to
express your own personality in something tangible, and to be encouraged
to do so. Do understand me, Auntie and the rest; it isn't that I want to
shirk, but I do want to specialize on what I do best! I'll wash dishes
if it's ever necessary, but why must I wish a whole pantry on myself
when either Burt or I could pay our proportionate share of a hotel
dish-washer, or butler, or whatever is needed?"

At the studio it was much easier.

"Some time in the early fall," Anne told her callers, who arrived by
two's, three's and four's, as the news began to circulate among her
friends.

"No, I won't keep this," with a jerk of her thumb towards the big, bare
room which had been hers since she left Aunt Milly and the little home
town. "There's a room at the top of the Kensington I can have, with a
light as good as this, and that settles the last problem. I'd hate to
have to go outdoors for meals, when I'm working."

"Nan Gilbert!" exclaimed her dearest friend. "You have the best luck!
You can do good work, and get good pay for it, and be happy all by
yourself; and now you're going to be happier, with a husband who'll let
you live your own life; you'll be absolutely free, not even a percolator
to bother with, nothing to take your mind from your own creative work,
free to express your own personality!"

"Mercy," said Anne, closing the door upon this last caller. "If I don't
set the North River, at least, on fire, pretty soon, they'll all call me
a slacker."

She hung her card, "Engaged," upon the door leading into the hall (some
one had scrawled "Best Wishes" underneath the printed word), and
proceeded to get her dinner in a thoughtful frame of mind. The tiny
kitchenette boasted ice-box, fireless, and a modest collection of
electric cooking appliances; in a half-hour Anne had evolved a cream
soup, a bit of steak, nearly cubical in proportions, slice of graham
bread, a salad of lettuce and tomato with skilfully tossed dressing, a
muffin split ready to toast, with the jam and spreader for it, and
coffee was dripping into the very latest model of coffee-pots. Anne had
never negl