"I had to leave spaces for the words you used that I had never heard," said she. "I did n’t think of it before, but there must be a lot of such words in your correspondence. Would you mind making me out a list of them, or giving me a catalogue? Next time I ’ll know them." "I’ll warrant you will. Except for them, you ’ve practically every word just as I gave it to you. See here, when have you done it? You have n’t had time to accomplish so much. It takes at least six months to make a respectable stenographer. You ’ve been at it but four. Come here and let me look at you. By rights you ought to have grown thin. No, I can’t see that you have." "Of course I have n’t. I ’ve never been so happy in my life." "Miss Henley, who is in the office, is going to be married in October." He studied her face keenly. She looked at him with eager eyes. He laughed. "If you were a pauper with a family to support, you could n’t look more appealing," he said. "Well, keep pegging away, and I ’ll recommend you to father." Mrs. Harrison Townsend did not come home at all that autumn. Instead, she sailed for Italy, taking Olive with her. From Europe Mrs. Townsend wrote Murray a letter which he showed to no one, but which gave him no little discomfort of mind. "I am much better away," she wrote, "where I shall not be in the throes of the revolution which has overtaken my household. With Jane refusing many of her most important invitations, Forrest away, and Shirley casting herself into the business world, like any poor man’s daughter, I should be too distressed to be able to play my own part with composure. I hear that Jane is not keeping up her calling list as conscientiously as she should do. Please try to impress her with her duty to our friends, even if she does not care to make them hers. When I return, I shall wish to take up my social life where I left it, and if I should find my friends alienated by the eccentricity of my daughter-in-law, I should feel that a wrong had been done which it would be difficult to overlook." "About the hardest thing in the world," thought Murray, as he pondered these lines, "seems to be for one woman to get another’s point of view. Here ’s Jane, staying at home all summer to keep me company, when she might have gone off to the seaside or the mountains with Olive. She ’s tackling big problems every day in the management of the house, to say nothing of looking after all mother’s social correspondence. She ’s entertained relatives of ours from in town and from out of town, to say nothing of making father’s evenings pleasant and seeing to her own family. Yet because some woman on mother’s list writes her that Jane has failed to pay a call within the required limit of time, the poor girl is ’eccentric.’ Well, she shall not be taxed with it, if I can help it."