“Dear me, yes. I know what that will mean to you. Why, after I came back from Maine, twenty years ago, I was as lonesome for sea-air as though it had been a person. To this day I long for the tang of that salt wind. That’s why I use whale-oil soap—because the smell of the suds reminds me of the sea. Of course you’re going to miss college, Barbara.”
“I shall try to keep so busy that I won’t have time to be lonely,” said Barbara.
“That’s the right spirit. It won’t be hard to do, either, in your house. Your family is a large one, and your mother is put to it to do everything. Gassy ain’t old enough yet to be of much help, and it’s easier to keep a secret than a girl, in Auburn. I guess she’ll be glad to have you here to pitch in. It’s a good thing that you like housework.”
“I’m afraid I don’t know much about it. Housekeeping is not my forte. Of course I shall help mother, but I don’t intend to do that kind of work to the exclusion of all other. I intend to save the best of myself for my writing.”
Miss Pettibone looked properly awed.
“Well, it’s a wonderful thing to be able to write. I always said that you’d be an authoress, when I used to see those school compositions of yours that the ‘Conservative’ used to print. Why, Barbara, you come in here once when you was in Kindergarten school, and you set down on my front window-sill, and you says, ‘Miss Pettibone,’ you says, ‘I’ve written a pome.’ And I says, ‘Good fer you, Barbara, let’s hear it.’ So you smoothed down your white apron, and recited it to me. ‘It’s about my mother,’ you says; ‘and this is it:—
‘Oh, Mrs. Grafton,’ said Miss Gray,
‘Oh, do your children run away?’
‘Oh, no,’ said she, ‘they never do;