ghtness while Joan does as she pleases?"

Doctor Martin, even Doris, expected Nancy to come when she was called
and go to bed when the clock struck ten, while Joan could follow her own
sweet will.

At this point Nancy re-read Joan's letters--all letters from Joan were
common property. If ever there was innocent jugglery Joan's letters
were. They were vivid and interesting; they carried one along on a
stream as clear as crystal, but they arrived at nothing.

The studio was left to the imagination of the reader. Doris saw it as a
safe and artistic home for earnest young girlhood; Nancy saw it as an
open sesame to fun, rather wilder than school bats, but with the same
delicious tang. Doctor Martin viewed the place as most dangerous, and
those young people gathered there as perilous offsprings of a
much-deplored departure from conservative youth.

"Fancy Joan helping in a restaurant!" groaned Nancy when Joan had
particularized about her "job." "Joan, of all people!"

"It will be good practice," Doris remarked in reply. "When Joan marries,
she will have had some experience."

"Marry?" David Martin broke in--he was on one of his flying visits. "If
anything could unfit a girl for marriage, the thing Joan is doing is
that."

"Very well," Doris said, quietly; "marriage isn't everything, David."

Doris was beginning to defend Joan, and it hurt her to be obliged to do
so. She did not regret the relinquishing of the girl, but she had hoped,
in her deepest love, that the experiment might either prove a failure or
that it might carry Joan to a peak--not a dead level. It was beginning
to seem that the sacrifice on her part meant simply separating Joan
from her--not giving Joan to anything worth while.

There were moments, rather vague, elusive ones, to be sure, when Doris
turned from Joan and contemplated Nancy.

"The child is perfectly content and happy," she thought; "but ought she
to be so--at her age? Nancy should marry--she will, of course, some
day.----" Then Doris wondered whom Nancy could marry.

"Next winter I may be able to go to New York," she comforted herself;
"or I'll send Nancy to Emily Tweksbury; the child shall have her life
chance."

But with Doris the inevitable was happening: she was sliding gracefully
down the inclined plane which others had arranged for her. She was
making no effort, because none was required of her. The peace and
comfort of the old house in restoring comparative health had placed i