spreading
out the folds of her rough serge skirt, and seeing it in imagination many
times its length and composed of shimmering satin.

'I shan't,' said Jean, regarding her with scorn. 'I don't want to be
presented. Any stupid idiot can put on a white satin dress, miles long,
and grin at Queen Victoria. _I_ want to be clever like father, and get a
degree at college, and lecture to thousands and thousands of people,
and----'

'Oh, don't be like that, Jean,' interrupted Barbara, earnestly. 'If you're
going to give lectures you'll have to go away from all your children, for
months and months and months, and leave them to break all their legs,
all by themselves, and--oh, it _is_ so horrible to break your leg all
by yourself!'

'Poor dear,' said Angela, ready as usual with a tearful and demonstrative
sympathy.

Jean was much too wrapped up in her future to sympathise with anybody.
'I dare say I shan't have any children,' she said, seized with a happy
inspiration. 'You can't have everything, and I'd much sooner have a
degree.'

Barbara looked at her in some doubt. 'That's all very well,' she remarked,
'but you'll be jolly dull if you don't look out. _I_ don't mean to go
without children; I'm going to have millions of 'em--all boys--see if I
don't! Then we can always be sure of having enough for sides, without
inviting strangers to come and play. You can never be sure how strangers
are going to play, and sometimes they spoil the game, and that's a bore.'

'If you have boys of your own, you'll be a mother; and if you're a mother,
you won't join in the games at all. Mothers only sit and look on, and send
the ones to bed that can't agree,' said Angela, with an air of experience.

'I don't advise you to be a mother, Babe,' added Jean, earnestly. 'You'll
have to mend such a lot of socks, and p'r'aps make babies' clothes
too; and you've been a whole term getting round the hem of one flannel
petticoat, as it is.'

'You _can_ get things ready-made,' answered Barbara, but her tone did not
sound hopeful. She had to own sadly to herself that she was not cut out
for a mother, and she fell back on the more practical futures of other
people. 'Wilfred's going to be a doctor, after all,' she told them, with
great pride. 'Auntie Anna says she'll stand all the money that father
can't, and he's going to St. Thomas's--Will is, I mean. Isn't it awfully
splendid?'

Her friends murmured something appropriate, but they were not deeply
in