n you know it
is, then it is, but when you don't know that it is, then it isn't. Is
that right?"

"Exactly. Wonderfully intelligent for one so young."

Barbara's blue eyes danced merrily and her red lips parted in a mocking
smile. A long heavy braid of hair, "the colour of ripe corn," hung over
either shoulder and into her lap. She was almost twenty-two, but she
still clung to the childish fashion of dressing her hair, because the
heavy braids and the hairpins made her head ache. All her gowns were
white, either of wool or cotton, and were made to be washed. On Sundays,
she sometimes wore blue ribbons on her braids.

[Sidenote: Simply Barbara]

To Roger, she was very fair. He never thought of her crutches because
she had always been lame. She was simply Barbara, and Barbara needed
crutches. It had never occurred to him that she might in any way be
different, for he was not one of those restless souls who are forever
making people over to fit their own patterns.

"Why doesn't your father like to have me come here?" asked Roger,
irrelevantly.

"Why doesn't your mother like to have you come?" queried Barbara,
quickly on the defensive.

"No, but tell me. Please!"

"Father always goes to bed early."

"But not at eight o'clock. It was a quarter of eight when I came, and by
eight he was gone."

"It isn't you, Roger," she said, unwillingly; "it's anyone. I'm all he
has, and if I talk much to other people he feels as if I were being
taken away from him--that's all. It's natural, I suppose. You mustn't
mind him."

"But I wouldn't hurt him," returned Roger, softly; "you know that."

"I know."

"I wish you could make him understand that I come to see every one of
you."

[Sidenote: Hard Work]

"It's the hardest work in the world," sighed Barbara, "to make people
understand things."

"Somebody said once that all the wars had been caused by one set of
people trying to force their opinions upon another set, who did not
desire to have their minds changed."

"Very true. I wonder, sometimes, if we have done right with father."

"I'm sure you have," said Roger, gently. "You couldn't do anything wrong
if you tried."

"We haven't meant to," she answered, her sweet face growing grave. "Of
course it was all begun long before I was old enough to understand. He
thinks the city house, which we lost so long ago that I cannot even
remember our having it, was sold for so high a price that it would have
been foolish not to