Always there had been some one to do her heavy things. She had put her washings out and taken her dinners in; three times a week she was swept and scrubbed and made immaculate. But to-night--to-night was different. This was to be no playing at work. Miss Theodosia rose to the occasion gallantly--indeed, exultantly. Thrills of enthusiasm ran up, ran down her spine. She prepared for a night of it. The dresses immersed in steaming hot water and her supper eaten, she stretched drying-lines, with considerable difficulty, from corner to corner of her kitchen, prepared an ironing-board, and got out long-idle irons. At eight o'clock she stopped for breath. Stefana's starch still resisted all inducements to part with Miss Theodosia's dresses; more hot water was required. After another steamy bath, they were cooled and wrung and draped over the crisscross clotheslines in the hot kitchen. Then Miss Theodosia temporarily retired from the field of battle. Theodosia Baxter had come back from her travelings to this small ancestral town with a mildly disturbing taste in her mouth. "Settling down" at thirty-six was not at all to her mind; she would not settle down! "If I catch you doing it, Theodosia Baxter!" she said. "If I catch you growing old! The minute you feel it coming on, you pack up and start for Rome! Or Paris! Or Turkistan! Start for Anywhere! Keep going!" But, already, did she feel it coming on even before all her trunks were unpacked? She was a little frightened at certain signs. Now, when she sat down heavily--why did she sit down heavily? If some one had called upon her for scores of little services, so that she must hop up again, immediately--little piping voices: "Mother, where's my cap?" "Mother, make Johnnie stop plaguing me!" "Mother, come quick!" If a big John had come home to her, demanding her time or sympathy or service-- "No little Johns--no big one!" She sighed. "Is that the matter with you, Theodosia Baxter? Well, for Heaven's sake, don't tell anybody! Keep a bold front." She dozed a little in her rocker while she waited. Her plaintive reveries took the shape of a sober little dream wherein one Theodosia Baxter tottered on a cane and another walked briskly and youngly among Johns. Both Theodosias were thirty-six. "Mercy!" she exclaimed, waking up. "Where's my cane? I must go and iron Stefana's dresses!" She felt oddly refreshed. Queer dream to refresh one! She found herself thinking kindly of Stefana. "I hope she's sound asleep, and a pitying little girl angel with a nurse's cap under her halo will slip down and cure her thumbs before she wakes up."