Mrs. Baxter.

"Why, you can ask Willie! She said it that funny way. 'Our 'ittle
sissy'; that's what she said. An' Miss Pratt said, 'Ev'rybody would love
our little sister if mamma washed her in soap an' water!' You can ask
Willie; that's exackly what Miss Pratt said, an' if you don't believe it
you can ask HER. If you don't want to believe it, why, you can ask--"

"Hush, dear," said Mrs. Baxter. "All this doesn't mean anything at all,
especially such nonsense as Willie's thinking of being married. It's
your bedtime."

"Well, but MAMMA--"

"Was that all they said?" Mr. Baxter inquired.

Jane turned to him eagerly. "They said all lots of things like that,
papa. They--"

"Nonsense!" Mrs. Baxter in interrupted. "Come, it's bedtime. I'll go up
with you. You mustn't think such nonsense."

"But, mamma--"

"Come along, Jane!"

Jane was obedient in the flesh, but her spirit was free; her opinions
were her own. Disappointed in the sensation she had expected to produce,
she followed her mother out of the room wearing the expression of a
person who says, "You'll SEE--some day when everything's ruined!"

Mr. Baxter, left alone, laughed quietly, lifted his neglected newspaper
to obtain the light at the right angle, and then allowed it to languish
upon his lap again. Frowning, he began to tap the floor with his shoe.

He was trying to remember what things were in his head when he was
seventeen, and it was difficult. It seemed to him that he had been a
steady, sensible young fellow--really quite a man--at that age. Looking
backward at the blur of youthful years, the period from sixteen to
twenty-five appeared to him as "pretty much all of a piece." He could
not recall just when he stopped being a boy; it must have been at about
fifteen, he thought.

All at once he sat up stiffly in his chair, and the paper slid from his
knee. He remembered an autumn, long ago, when he had decided to abandon
the educational plans of his parents and become an actor. He had located
this project exactly, for it dated from the night of his seventeenth
birthday, when he saw John McCullough play "Virginius."

Even now Mr. Baxter grew a little red as he remembered the remarkable
letter he had written, a few weeks later, to the manager of a passing
theatrical company. He had confidently expected an answer, and had made
his plans to leave town quietly with the company and afterward reassure
his parents by telegraph. In fact, he might have been o