"You are going to college, I suppose?" she presently inquired; and Vivian owned that it was the desire of her heart.
"Nonsense!" said her father. "Stuff and nonsense, Vivian! You're not going to college."
The Foote girls now burst forth in voluble agreement with Mr. Lane. His wife was evidently of the same mind; and Mrs. Williams plainly regretted her question. But Vivian mustered courage enough to make a stand, strengthened perhaps by the depth of the feeling which had brought her into the room.
"I don't know why you're all so down on a girl's going to college. Eve Marks has gone, and Mary Spring is going—and both the Austin girls. Everybody goes now."
"I know one girl that won't," was her father's incisive comment, and her mother said quietly, "A girl's place is at home—'till she marries."
"Suppose I don't want to marry?" said Vivian.
"Don't talk nonsense," her father answered. "Marriage is a woman's duty."
"What do you want to do?" asked Miss Josie in the interests of further combat. "Do you want to be a doctor, like Jane Bellair?"
"I should like to very much indeed," said the girl with quiet intensity. "I'd like to be a doctor in a babies' hospital."
"More nonsense," said Mr. Lane. "Don't talk to me about that woman! You attend to your studies, and then to your home duties, my dear."