“A letter came last night from your Cousin Don—I really believe I forgot to tell you—perhaps I was jealous of his right to spend money for you. He asked me to decide what would be best for you, from my knowledge of yourself, and said any amount would be forthcoming that your plans needed. His heart is in his native land still. He will never come home to stay as long as his wife”—“lives” in his thought was instantly changed to “objects” upon his lips. “So you would really like to go back to city life?” “Yes,” said Judith with slow decision. Why should she not go home with John Kenney’s mother, she argued, as she stood silent before Roger. He was studying medicine in New York; he had written her once, only once, and then to tell her that he had decided upon the medical course: “If I cannot have something else I want I will have _this_. Life has got to have something for me.” A week later Lottie Kindare had written one of her infrequent letters; the burden of the letter seemed to be a twenty-mile drive with John Kenney and an engagement to go to see pictures with him. “I have always liked John, you know—John with the crimson name.” She was glad of both letters; they both revealed something she had no other way of learning. She had not hurt John beyond recovery, and Lottie would have something she wished for most. “Don will be glad to take the responsibility of you. You give him another reason for staying alive.” “Hasn’t he reasons enough—without me?” “He ought to have,” was the serious reply. “Everybody should have, excepting yourself.” “Myself appears to be the chief reason to me.” “Take as much time as you like to decide—and remember, you go of your own free will.” “Roger, you know it isn’t that I choose to _go_—” she began, earnestly. “Oh, no,” he said, as he turned away, “not Caesar less, but Rome more.” He went into the study and shut the door. “The child, the child,” he groaned, “she has no more thought of me than—Uncle Cephas.” When his mother and sister returned, and the supper bell rang, he opened the door to say to Marion that he would have no supper, he had work to do. “Yes,” he thought grimly, “I _have_ work to do—to fight myself into shape.” XXXI. ABOUT WOMEN. “Like a blind spinner in the sun, I tread my days; I know that all the threads will run Appointed ways; I know each day will bring its task, And, being blind, no more I ask.” —H. H. “I wish you would tell Judith Mackenzie all you know about women’s doings,” said Jean Draper Prince one morning late in November. “I am ready to give the Bensalem girls a lecture upon what women outside of Bensalem are doing,” said the lady in the bamboo rocker with her knitting. “All the ambitious girls, all the discouraged girls.” The bamboo rocker was Jean’s wedding present from Judith Mackenzie; Jean had told Mrs. Lane that the broad blue ribbon bow tied upon it was exactly the color of Judith’s eyes.