This autumn season had brought a new break into the McAlister family circle. Phebe had gone away to Philadelphia, almost immediately after their return from the seashore. If her interest in medical science were on the wane, at least she was too proud to confess the fact, and the doctor, with some misgivings, had consented to her departure. "There's no especial reason Babe shouldn't make a good doctor," he said to his wife, the night after the matter was finally decided; "the trouble is, there seems to be no especial reason that she should. I can't discover that she's any more in love with that profession than with a dozen others. She simply took it up because it was the most obvious one, and because she was restless for some sort of an occupation." "Wait and see," his wife counselled him. "For the present, she is contented with this choice, and she may as well try it for a year. By that time, she will be able to decide whether she wants to go on. One year of it, at her age, can't do any harm, and it may do her some good, if only to steady her down a little." "Then you don't think she will carry it through?" "No," she said honestly; "I don't. Babe hasn't the make-up for a professional woman in any line. She is too self-centred, too impetuous. She needs something to humanize her womanhood, not make an abstract thing of her. I'd rather see Babe a gentle, loving woman than the greatest light of her profession." "What a little bigot it is!" the doctor said teasingly. "No, not a bigot," she returned quickly. "I believe in a girl's taking a profession, when it is the one absorbing interest of her life. It wouldn't be so with Babe. She would take it from restlessness, not love, from sheer unused vitality that must have an outlet. It was different with Ted; it will be different with Allyn. They are ready to give up other things for their work. Phebe isn't." "After all, Babe is developing," the doctor said thoughtfully. "She is steadier than she used to be, and a good deal more true and sincere. If she would only grow a little more affectionate, I should be content." "Wait," his wife repeated. "She develops slowly, and she hasn't found out yet just which way it is worth her while to grow. When she does, you will find that she grows fast enough. Look at Allyn. He seems like a new creature in this new plan of his." The doctor smiled a little sadly. "Perhaps I am impatient, Bess; but I am getting to be an old man, and I want to see all my children on their own straight roads, before I die."