ore in love with that profession than with a
dozen others. She simply took it up because it was the most obvious one,
and because she was restless for some sort of an occupation."

"Wait and see," his wife counselled him. "For the present, she is
contented with this choice, and she may as well try it for a year. By
that time, she will be able to decide whether she wants to go on. One
year of it, at her age, can't do any harm, and it may do her some good,
if only to steady her down a little."

"Then you don't think she will carry it through?"

"No," she said honestly; "I don't. Babe hasn't the make-up for a
professional woman in any line. She is too self-centred, too impetuous.
She needs something to humanize her womanhood, not make an abstract thing
of her. I'd rather see Babe a gentle, loving woman than the greatest
light of her profession."

"What a little bigot it is!" the doctor said teasingly.

"No, not a bigot," she returned quickly. "I believe in a girl's taking a
profession, when it is the one absorbing interest of her life. It
wouldn't be so with Babe. She would take it from restlessness, not love,
from sheer unused vitality that must have an outlet. It was different
with Ted; it will be different with Allyn. They are ready to give up
other things for their work. Phebe isn't."

"After all, Babe is developing," the doctor said thoughtfully. "She is
steadier than she used to be, and a good deal more true and sincere. If
she would only grow a little more affectionate, I should be content."

"Wait," his wife repeated. "She develops slowly, and she hasn't found out
yet just which way it is worth her while to grow. When she does, you will
find that she grows fast enough. Look at Allyn. He seems like a new
creature in this new plan of his."

The doctor smiled a little sadly.

"Perhaps I am impatient, Bess; but I am getting to be an old man, and I
want to see all my children on their own straight roads, before I die."

But if Phebe's choice of career filled her family with doubtful
questionings, their doubts were at an end in respect to Allyn. The boy
had not only come back from the seashore to settle down into the harness
of school life again; he was even tugging hard at the traces. Mindful of
his bargain with his father, anxious to prove that his wish was both
fixed and earnest, he had gone to work with a dogged determination to
show his father that, once interested, he was capable of doing honest,
solid w