"No, I'll be here, Steve. We'll see each other then, anyway.... Do you think you'll get along with your aunt?"
"I don't know," said the girl. "She means to be kind, I suppose. But dad spoiled me. Oh, Jim! I'm—I'm too unhappy to c-care what becomes of me now. I'll finish the term and then I'll go and learn how to nurse sick little defective children while you're away——" her voice broke again.
"I wish you wouldn't cry," said the boy;—"I'm—I can't stand it——"
"Oh, forgive me!" She sprang up and flung herself on the rug beside his chair.
"I'm sorry! I'm selfish. I'll do everything dad wished, cheerfully. You'll go abroad and educate yourself by travel, and I'll learn a profession. And some day I'll find out what I really am fitted to do, and then I'll go abroad and study, too."
"You'll be twenty, then, Steve—just the age to know what you really want to do."
She nodded, listlessly, kneeling there beside his chair, her cheek resting on her clasped hands, her grey eyes fixed on the dying coals.
After a long silence she said:
"Jim, I really don't know what I want to do in life. I am not certain that I want to do anything."
"What? Not the stage?"