"Why should a beefsteak be scorched?" she would ask protestingly. "It is only a question of attention and honesty. Why should the aroma be boiled out of a pot of coffee? Again, it is only a matter of attention and honesty." That was her attitude always, and the servant who hoped to please her must ceaselessly recognize it. Sometimes her aunt would plead for a little lenity in these matters, but the girl would grant none. "The servants are employed to do things right. Why should I let them do things wrong? They profess to have skill in such work. Surely, they ought to do it as well as I can, who have no skill. And besides, it wouldn't be good for them to let them off with less than the best. They would degenerate. They have their living to make by work, and the better work they do the better work they can do." A few years later the aunt's husband met with misfortune and went to the West. Presently he died, and Barbara's aunt was widowed and impoverished at one and the same time. Then it was that Barbara rose in the strength of her practical wisdom, and met the emergency with all of character that she had built up. Her aunt was helpless, so Barbara took matters into her own hands. She was nearly twenty years old then, and her capacities as a housekeeper had ripened through use until she felt modestly confident of herself. "Besides," she argued, "there is nobody else to do things if I don't." She persuaded her aunt to take a little house with a big sunny dining room, and there she offered to the young bachelors of the town--in her aunt's name--better meals than they could get at the pretentious hotel, and she charged them scarcely more than half the hotel rate. One by one the best of the young men in the town were drawn to Barbara's table until the dining room was filled. After that anyone who wished to join the circle must put his name upon a waiting list, and bide his time till there should be a vacancy. For Barbara held that it would be unjust to crowd present boarders in order to take new ones, and she hated all injustice. The waiting list was always long, for the fame of Barbara's table was great. When her friends suggested an increase in her charges, she promptly said them nay. "I'm charging enough," she answered. "The gentlemen pay us enough to keep auntie and me comfortable. They have to work hard for their money, and it would be very mean to charge them more, merely because they'll pay it rather than get their meals anywhere else." "Perhaps so," answered Captain Will Hallam, who had pressed this advice upon the girl. "But it's always good business, you know, to get what you can. A thing is worth what it will sell for, and your good dinners, Miss Barbara, would sell for a good deal more than you are charging for them." But Barbara would not listen to the wisdom of "business." Hers was the wisdom of a white soul, and it controlled her absolutely.