as her daughter was.

"It's curious," said Barbara to Julia, in one of their first hours
alone, "but there _is_ a distinction and an excitement about getting
engaged, and you enjoy it just as much at thirty as at twenty--perhaps
more. People--or persons, as Francis says--who have never paid me any
attention before, are flocking to the front now with presents and good
wishes, and some who never have seen Captain Fox congratulate me--it
amounts to congratulation--as if _any_ marriage were better than none!"

"Well, there is a something about marriage," Julia admitted; "you may
not have any reason for feeling so, but you _do_ feel superior, 'way down
in your secret heart! And yet, Babbie," and a little shadow darkened her
bright face, "and yet, once you _are_ married, you see a sort of--well, a
sort of uncompromising brightness about girlhood, too! When I go out to
The Alexander now, and remember my old busy days there, and walking to
chapel with Aunt Sanna, in the fresh, early mornings--I don't know--it
makes me almost a little sad!"

"Don't speak of it," said Barbara. "When I think of leaving Dad, and
home, and going off to England, and having to make friends of awful
women with high cheek bones, and mats of crimps coming down to their
eyebrows, it scares me to death!"

And both girls laughed gayly. They were having tea in Julia's
drawing-room on a cold bright afternoon in May.

"I'll miss Dad most," pursued Barbara seriously. "Mother's so much with
Ted now, anyway." She frowned at the fire. "Mother's curious, Ju," she
added presently. "Every one says she's an ideal mother, and so on, and I
suppose she is, but--"

"You're more like your father, anyway," Julia suggested in the pause.

"It's not only that," said Barbara slowly, "but Mother has never been in
sympathy with any one of us! Ned deceived her, Sally deceived her,
Theodora went deliberately against her advice, and broke her heart, and
Con and Jane don't really respect her opinion at all! I'm the oldest,
her first born--"

"And she loves you dearly," Julia said soothingly.

"Used to Ju, when I was a baby. And loves me theoretically now. But she
has taken my not marrying to heart much more than the curious marriages
Ned and the girls have made! Hints about old maids, and stories about
her own popularity as a girl, regardless of the fact that no one wanted
me--"

"Oh, Babbie!"

"Well, no one did!" Barbara laughed a little dryly. "Why, not two months
ago