running a
boarding-house for a lot of girls who were better off at work. Her aunt
was merely making them dissatisfied with their lot. She did not guess
the import of the industries in Mrs. Owen's kitchen, as reported through
various agencies; they were merely a new idiosyncracy of her aunt's old
age, a deplorable manifestation of senility.

Sylvia was a comfortable confessor; Mrs. Bassett said many things to her
that she would have liked to say to Mrs. Owen, with an obscure hope that
they might in due course be communicated to that inexplicable old woman.
And Sylvia certainly was past; mistress of the difficult art of brushing
hair without tangling and pulling it, thereby tearing one's nerves to
shreds--as the nurse did. Mrs. Owen's visits were only occasional, but
they usually proved disturbing. She sniffed at the nurse and advised her
niece to get up. She knew a woman in Terre Haute who went to bed on her
thirtieth birthday and left it only to be buried in her ninetieth year.
Sylvia was a far more consoling visitor to this invalid propped up on
pillows amid a litter of magazines, with the cool lake at her elbow.
Sylvia did not pooh-pooh Christian Science and New Thought and such
things with which Mrs. Bassett was disposed to experiment. Sylvia even
bestowed upon her a boon in the shape of the word "psychotherapy." Mrs.
Bassett liked it, and declared that if she read a paper before the
Fraserville Woman's Club the next winter--a service to which she was
solemnly pledged--psychotherapy should be her subject. Thus Mrs.
Bassett found Sylvia serviceable and comforting. And the girl knew her
place, and all.

Morton Bassett found Sylvia tutoring his son one day when he arrived at
Waupegan unexpectedly. Mrs. Bassett explained the arrangement privately
in her own fashion.

"You seem to take no interest in your children, Morton. I thought
Blackford was your particular pride, but the fact that he was
practically expelled from school seemed to make not the slightest
impression on you. I thought that until you _did_ realize that the boy
was wasting his time here, I'd take matters into my own hands. Miss
Garrison seems perfectly competent; she tells me Blackford is very
quick--all he needs is application."

"I hadn't got around to that yet, Hallie. I'd intended taking it up this
week. I'm very busy," murmured Bassett.

His wife's choice of a tutor seemed inconsistent with her earlier
animosity toward Sylvia, but he shrank fr