rself you
can't--and never having any time to see him. Perhaps if we did, other
people might, and we'd all have more time to like things that make us
nicer to like--"

At this perturbing jumble of suggestions, Mrs. Mortimer's head whirled.
She took hold of the arms of her chair as if to steady herself, but,
conscientiously afraid of discouraging the girl's confidence, she nodded
gravely at her, as if she were considering the matter. Lydia sprang up,
her eyes shining. "Oh, you dear! You _do_ see what I mean! You see how
dreadful it is to look forward to just that--being so desperately
troubled over things that don't really matter--and--and perhaps having
children, and bringing them up to the same thing--when there must be so
many things that do matter!"

To each of these impassioned statements her sister had returned an
automatic nod. "I see what you mean," she now put in, a statement which
was the outward expression of a thought running, "Mercy! Dr. Melton's
right! She's perfectly wild with nerves! We must get her married as soon
as ever we can!"

Lydia went over to the window, and stood looking out as she talked, now
with an excited haste, now with a dragging note of fatigue in her voice.
Her need of sympathy was so great that she did a violence to the
reticence she had always kept, even with herself. She wondered aloud if
it were not perhaps Daniel Rankin and his queer ideas that lay at the
bottom of her trouble. She added, whirling about from the window, "For
mercy's sake! don't go and think I am in love with him, or anything! I
haven't so much as thought of him all winter! I see, now that Mother's
pointed it out to me, how domineering he really was to me last autumn.
I'm just crazy about Paul, too! When I'm with him he takes my breath
away! But maybe--maybe I can't forget Mr. Rankin's _ideas_! You know he
talked to me so much when I was first back--and if somebody would just
argue me out of them, the way he did into them! I don't believe I'd ever
have thought it queer to live the way we do, just to have more things
and get ahead of other people--if he hadn't put the idea into my head.
But nobody else will even _talk_ about it! They laugh when I try to."

She came over closer to the matron, and said imploringly, her voice
trembling, "I don't _want_ to be queer, Marietta! What makes me? I
don't like to have queer ideas, different from other people's--but every
once in a while it all comes over me with a rush--what