ntelligent and instructive, you want to go. Go if you want to,
but I will think you are mad if you do! A girl who confused 'La Boheme'
with 'The Bohemian Girl,' and wants an enlarged crayon portrait of
Austin in her drawing-room! Really, it's--well, it's remarkable to me.
I don't know what you see in it!"

"Crayon portraits used to be considered quite attractive, and may be
again," said Mrs. Phelps, mildly. "And some day your children will
think Puccini and Strauss as old-fashioned as you think 'Faust' and
Offenbach. But there are other things, like the things that a woman
loves to do, for instance, when her children are grown, and her husband
is dead, that never change!"

Cornelia was silent, frankly puzzled.

"Wouldn't you rather do nothing than take up the stupid routine work of
a woman who has no money, no position, and no education?" she asked
presently.

"I don't believe I would," her mother answered, smiling. "Perhaps I've
changed. Or perhaps I never sat down and seriously thought things out
before. I took it for granted that our way of doing things was the only
way. Of course I don't expect every one to see it as I do. But it seems
to me now that I belong there. When she first called me 'Mother
Phelps,' it made me angry, but what sweeter thing could she have said,
after all? She has no mother. And she needs one, now. I don't think you
have ever needed me in your life, Cornelia--actually NEEDED me, my
hands and my eyes and my brain."

"Oh, you are incorrigible!" said Cornelia, still with an air of
lenience. "Now," she stopped for a kiss, "we're going out to-night, so
I brought you The Patricians to read; it's charming. And you read it,
and be a good mater, and don't think any more about going out to stay
on that awful, uncivilized ranch. Visit there in a year or two, if you
like, but don't strike roots. I'll come in and see you when I'm
dressed."

And she was gone. But Mrs. Phelps felt satisfied that enough had been
said to make her begin to realize that she was serious, and she
contentedly resumed her dreaming over the fire.

The years, many or few, stretched pleasantly before her. She smiled
into the coals. She was still young enough to enjoy the thought of
service, of healthy fatigue, of busy days and quiet evenings, and long
nights of deep sleep, with slumbering Yerba Buena lying beneath the
moon outside her open window. There would be Austin close beside her
and other friends almost as near, to whom