I remember another compliment. It was when, in town, a charming little woman, a woman all of physical curves and mental tangents, had been telling a group of us about a gay day in a four-in-hand. She had not looked at me because for that sort of woman, as well as for others, I lack all that which would make them take account of my presence; but when in the four-in-hand she came to some mention of the road where the accident had nearly occurred ("Oh, it was a beautiful road," she said, "the river on one side, and the highlands, and a whole _mob_ of trees,") she turned straight upon me through her description as consistently as she had neglected me when she described the elbow-bits of the leaders and the boots of the woman on the box-seat. It may have been a chance, but I have always hugged it to me. My neighbour's house is small, and her little upstairs rooms are the half-story with sloping ceilings and windows which extend from the floor to the top of one's head. It gives me a curious sense of over-familiarity with a window to be as tall as it is. I feel that I have it at advantage and that I am using it with undue intimacy. When I was a little girl I used to creep under the dining-room table and sit there, looking up, transfixed at the difference. A new angle of material vision, the sight of the other side of the shield, always gives me this pause. But whereas this other aspect of things used to be a delight, now, in life, I shrink a little from availing myself of certain revelations. I have a great wish to know things, but I would know them otherwise than by looking at their linings. I think that even a window should be sanctioned in its reticences. Before a black walnut commode my neighbour knelt that afternoon, and I found that it was filled with the things which she had made for the baby, when they should find him. These she showed to me--they were simple and none too fine, and she had made them on her sewing-machine in the intervals of her busy life. For three years she had wrought at them, buying them from the egg money. I wondered if this secret pastime of garment-making might not account for my impression of her that she must always be off to engage in something other. Perhaps it was this occupation, always calling her, which would not let her appear fixed at garden-watering or festival. I think that it may be so of any who are "pressed in the spirit" to serve, to witness to any truth: that is their vocation and every other is an avocation, a calling away from the real business of life. For this reason it is my habit to think of the social workers in any division of the service, family or town or state or church, as Vocationists. It is they who are following the one great occupation. The rest of us are avocationists. In my neighbour I perceived one of the great comrade company of the Vocationists, unconscious of her banner, but because of some sweet, secret piping, following, following....