"That was drudgery sewing—making men's shirts and doing a lot of finger sewing that can be done by the machine now in the wink of an eye. But the sewing that is worth while cultivating now is the kind that can't be done by the machine but by the fingers of an artist. Embroidery and specialized dressmaking like that we've been talking about—those are the kinds of sewing that make you a craftswoman and an artist and not a drudge."
"You've stowed away all that your teacher has told you, I see."
"She did tell me most of that, but some of it I thought out and then asked her about. You see, since that time when I told Mother I wanted to pay my board—"
"I'm afraid you hurt your mother's feelings then."
"Oh, Granny dear, do you really think so? I didn't mean to, but I couldn't seem to make anybody understand until I said that," Helen paused an instant disconsolately. "Any way, since that time I've been thinking a lot about what I want to do. I want to go to college, but I don't want to teach or be a nurse or a doctor. Margaret says she's going to be a newspaper woman or be on a magazine or something of that sort. But I seem to be hard to suit."
"It's a long time yet before you have to decide."
"I know it is, but if I decide pretty soon I can make all my college work help me toward what I am going to do afterwards."
"That would be an advantage."
"The trouble is that I like all the homey occupations; I'd like to be the best housekeeper in the world."
"That's a modest wish! However, housekeeping is a science in these days of organizing ideas and knowledge, and if you want to keep house on a large scale it would be perfectly possible for you to learn about sanitation and ventilation and so on at college and then find a position as housekeeper for some charitable institution."