Saturday, Sunday, Monday morning again. Catherine, shivering a little in the wind from the gray river, as the bus lumbered down the Drive, tried to escape the clutter of thoughts left from the week-end. She had borrowed twenty-five dollars from Charles that morning, for Miss Kelly. She had pretended not to see his eyebrows when she laid the market bills in front of him. Flora had said, when Catherine suggested more discretion in shopping: "Yes'm, I'll make a 'tempt. But charging things in a grocery store jest stimulates my cooking ideas." Perhaps I'll have to take back the shopping. A gust caught her hat, wheeled it half around. And clothes! I've got to have some. How? I won't have a cent left out of that first check. It's like an elephant balancing on a ball, or a tight-rope walker without his umbrella, this whole business. Last night, when her mother had come in, and Bill and Dr. Henrietta, her mother with several amusing little stories about the friend who had come from Peoria, Illinois, to spend the winter with her--too plump to fit easily into the kitchenette--Charles, with his affectionate raillery of Mrs. Spencer--her mother was fond of Charles. But he needn't have made a jest of Saturday morning, and his refusal to give up his job to stay home with Letty. "That's what poor men are coming to, I'm afraid," her mother had told him. Henrietta had jibed openly at him, so openly that only Mrs. Spencer's gentle and fantastic mockery had smoothed his feathers. And Bill had said nothing. Catherine drew her collar closely about her throat. She had found him looking at her, and in his glance almost a challenge, a recall of that brief walk on Friday. "I hope it's straight, your road," he had said then. She shrugged more deeply into her coat. Straight! Was it a road? Or merely a blind alley? Or a tight-rope, and she had to poise herself and juggle a hundred balls as she crossed; the house, the children, the bills, Charles, always Charles, and her work. She came back to the thought of Dr. Roberts and the explanation she must offer. Dr. Roberts, however, seemed miraculously to need no explanation. He had called to tell her that the committee was to stay over Monday, and that she could meet the two men after all. With sudden release from the tension of the past days, Catherine moved freely into this other world, and her road seemed again straight. She was quietly proud of the conservative response her suggestions met; her mind was agile, cool, untroubled. There grew up a plan for a first-hand study of several of the normal schools. Someone from the Bureau might go west. Catherine brushed aside her sudden picture of herself, walking among the bricks and stone, the people, for which these dust-grimed catalogues stood.