“Yes, I know she has,—more’s the pity. A prodigy now and then must be encouraging to a college faculty, but it’s a bit hard on the prodigy herself, and harder still on the prodigy’s family. Intellectual lights ought to be hidden under a ton, instead of a bushel, so it wouldn’t be so easy to dig them out. I believe, myself, that Barbara has a fine mind, and unusual ability, but, dear heart, she’s only a child! She has to live before she can write.”
“I haven’t dared tell her that yet,” said her mother; “I don’t want even to seem to discourage her. And you know how confident Barbara is.”
“I wish she were a bit less self-confident; she’s bound to be disappointed, and I’m afraid that she sets her hopes so high that the fall, when it comes, will be a hard one. I wish, too, that she wasn’t quite so serious about it all. Her saving grace of humor seems to have utterly deserted her at this trying period of her existence.”
“That’s a way that humor sometimes has,” said Mrs. Grafton. “The very jolliest, drollest woman I ever knew confided to me once that her sense of humor had entirely deserted her, at one time. She had been out sailing with the man who afterward became her husband, and during the course of the evening he had done a little love-making. ‘He called me Sweetie,’ she said to me. ‘Think of it! Sweetie! Why, it’s as bad as Pettie, or Lambie!’ And the worst of it was that it didn’t even seem funny to me until after I thought it over at home. ‘When love comes in the door, humor flies out of the window,’ she said; and I suppose it may be the same way with genius.”
“If Barbara’s genius was armed with a broom instead of a pen, it would be better for her,” said her father. “And that is why I am glad, for her sake as well as yours, that you are going away. The girl isn’t all dreamer; she has a practical compartment in that brain of hers, and your absence will give her a chance to open the doors and windows of it, and sweep the cobwebs out. Oh, I’m not worried about Barbara,—she’ll rise to occasions. And we’ll get along beautifully. If you’ll only come back to us well and strong—”
Maud S. made an unnecessary clatter over the macadam road, in order not to hear the rest of the sentence. The anxious note in her master’s voice swallowed up the last trace of her resentment.
In the meantime the little group on the Grafton porch had turned back into the house. Jack had taken his fishing-tackle, and gone off down the dusty road without a word. David, with a plaintive expression on his thin little face, had turned to his beloved “Greek Heroes” for comfort. The Kid’s tears had been dried by Barbara’s handkerchief and two raisin cookies, and he had gone to the sand-pile to play. Gassy, alone, was unaccounted for. She had slipped away from the porch when her mother was assisted into the carriage, and was not in sight when the others turned back into the house.
“Picking up, first,” sighed Barbara, as she came back into the big living-room, which seemed unusually untidy and cheerless. “Then the bed-making and the chamber-work, planning the meals, and ordering the supplies. I think I shall write out all the menus for Ellen,—that will be the easiest way.” She was putting the room in order, and her hands flew with her thoughts. “I mean to do everything systematically. I want to prove to father that, college fits a girl for anything,—even practical life, and if I keep the house in order, discipline the children, and have some excellent meals, I think he’ll be convinced. It will take some time to get things started, but I believe that after I have them systematized, they will go smoothly, and I shall have plenty of time left for my writing. Mother always spent so much time on the unnecessary little things; no wonder she went to pieces—poor mother!”
Something dimmed Barbara’s tender eyes, but she steadied her lips and went on with her plans:—