"I know what you have been thinking, dear," she said. "You're thinking that I'm not consistent nor fair--and you're right. I am neither. I agree with you absolutely. Having in the first place consented to your studying for the stage, I should have looked ahead and faced just this. As you say, one can't begin at the tip-top--nor yet at the top. One must make use of humble stepping-stones." But it seemed that the struggle she had been through to bring herself to this attitude had been in vain. On a sudden she lost all that she had gained. Her heart sank as Elsie's face brightened eagerly--became transformed, indeed. "The trouble is," she went on sadly, "that the stepping-stones--oh, Elsie, I'm so afraid the stepping-stones will only lead on and on and on--never higher. They'll be and remain on a dead level, and you will step from one to another, one to another, year after year, over the same dreary waste. I hate awfully to say all this, dear, but when those people refuse to allow you to do anything but the Elsie-Honey business over and over, it comes to me what a fate it would be to be doomed forever to that one stunt." "Oh, Cousin Julia!" Elsie cried deprecatingly. "Yes, dear, that's what I am exactly, an old killjoy; but truly I cannot help it, though I have tried. I have struggled hard against my prejudice. Elsie, last night you stopped yourself as you were about to tell me something, but I fear I can guess what it was like. Some one suggested your going on the road, as they say, with that one thing as your repertoire--making a tour of the cheap moving-picture houses of a certain section?" Elsie grew very pale; her lips trembled. One interested wholly in her dramatic career, seeing her at that moment, might have concluded that the girl had it in her to develop a capacity for tragedy as well as comedy. "Cousin Julia," she said with tremulous dignity, "I don't want you to come with me this week. I can go back and forth in a carriage by myself. I've got to go through it, for I promised and they will have made arrangements, but--please don't come with me any more." She gazed at Miss Pritchard through reproachful tears, but when she saw tears streaming down Miss Pritchard's plain, staunch face, she ran to her arms. "My dear, it's only because I love you so, because you are the very apple of my eye, that I talk so," the latter declared, and the warm words went straight to the girl's sore heart. "I know I'm not just, but dear, we won't let anything come between us--ever. I'll do my best to see your side of it, and you must be patient with me. It's hard, I know, for youth to bear with age, for inexperience to hear the ugly words of experience; but now we'll just go through the week together and await what comes."