"What are you up to?" Dr. Maynard sang out; and I called back, "Coming," and hustled into my warm overshoes. It was a beautiful dark starry night, and I wished Alec could have felt a little of the cold air on his hot head. I love an automobile! I'm never happier than when I'm sitting with my two hands on the wheel, one toe on the gas, the other on the brake, a heel on the little pedal that makes the old machine snort up a hill like a horse dug in the side with a spur. But to-night I didn't care to run the car. I suppose I wasn't a very entertaining companion, for on the way home, after we had been out about an hour, Dr. Maynard asked in his friendly manner: "What is it, Bobbie? You're leaving it to me to have most of the fun to-night." "Dr. Maynard," I exclaimed, "I'd give anything in the world if I were a man and could earn some money." "What profession would you follow?" he laughed at me. "I'm serious. Has Alec ever told you much about the business?" "Not much, but I know he's been disturbed about something lately." "Well," I said, "there's one of those pictures in that big Doré book with illustrations of the Old Testament, that reminds me of the Vars' affairs. It's a picture of Samson, and he's standing in a great huge kind of hall, pushing down two perfectly enormous stone pillars. The walls and the ceiling and the roof are all caving in--people headfirst, arms, legs, great blocks of granite, children, men,--oh, everything you can think of--tumbling down in horrible confusion. That picture used to give me the nightmare; and now it seems to me as if some old giant of a Samson had gotten down underneath us. All our underpinnings are giving way and we're all falling down--headfirst a thousand feet, smash, on to rock-bottom." "Why, what do you mean, Bobbie?" laughed Dr. Maynard, amused. "I mean," I replied--though perhaps I ought not to have told--"I mean, that Alec is going to sell the house and Dixie and we're going to keep only one girl. I mean that the business is on the ragged edge of nothing, and that we're as poor as paupers." Dr. Maynard slowed down our speed to ten miles an hour. "Al's a plucky fellow," he said. "I hadn't an idea!" Then he added, "_You_ want to help?" "Well," I replied, "I've got to have a lot of money right off, and I don't like to ask Alec. It's for an emergency," I added. "Can you think of any possible way for a girl who can't do a thing on earth but scrub and darn stockings, to earn a fortune?" I think we ran about a mile before Dr. Maynard spoke. Then when he did, he seemed to be almost apologising for his scheme, which seemed to me perfectly lovely.