“Don't, Jane!” her mother exclaimed. “Well, I haf to show papa how Willie looked, don't I?” said Jane, relaxing. “That's just the way he looked. Well, an' then they stopped an' talked to me, an' Miss Pratt said, 'It's our little sister.'” “Did she really?” Mrs. Baxter asked, gravely. “Yes'm, she did. Soon as she saw who I was, she said, 'Why, it's our little sister!' Only she said it that way she talks--sort of foolish. 'It's our ittle sissy'--somep'm like that, mamma. She said it twice an' told me to go home an' get washed up. An' Miss Pratt told Willie--Miss Pratt said, 'It isn't mamma's fault Jane's so dirty,' just like that. She--” “Are you sure she said 'our little sister'?” said Mrs. Baxter. “Why, you can ask Willie! She said it that funny way. 'Our 'ittle sissy'; that's what she said. An' Miss Pratt said, 'Ev'rybody would love our little sister if mamma washed her in soap an' water!' You can ask Willie; that's exackly what Miss Pratt said, an' if you don't believe it you can ask HER. If you don't want to believe it, why, you can ask--” “Hush, dear,” said Mrs. Baxter. “All this doesn't mean anything at all, especially such nonsense as Willie's thinking of being married. It's your bedtime.” “Well, but MAMMA--” “Was that all they said?” Mr. Baxter inquired. Jane turned to him eagerly. “They said all lots of things like that, papa. They--” “Nonsense!” Mrs. Baxter in interrupted. “Come, it's bedtime. I'll go up with you. You mustn't think such nonsense.” “But, mamma--” “Come along, Jane!” Jane was obedient in the flesh, but her spirit was free; her opinions were her own. Disappointed in the sensation she had expected to produce, she followed her mother out of the room wearing the expression of a person who says, “You'll SEE--some day when everything's ruined!” Mr. Baxter, left alone, laughed quietly, lifted his neglected newspaper to obtain the light at the right angle, and then allowed it to languish upon his lap again. Frowning, he began to tap the floor with his shoe. He was trying to remember what things were in his head when he was seventeen, and it was difficult. It seemed to him that he had been a steady, sensible young fellow--really quite a man--at that age. Looking backward at the blur of youthful years, the period from sixteen to twenty-five appeared to him as “pretty much all of a piece.” He could not recall just when he stopped being a boy; it must have been at about fifteen, he thought. All at once he sat up stiffly in his chair, and the paper slid from his knee. He remembered an autumn, long ago, when he had decided to abandon the educational plans of his parents and become an actor. He had located this project exactly, for it dated from the night of his seventeenth birthday, when he saw John McCullough play “Virginius.”