"I--I don't know yet, just what to do; there's all summer to plan; but I want--somehow--to make the very most and the best of myself," I added earnestly. It was true, and the nearest I could come to the exact truth; that love urged me yet more eagerly upon the Quest, and that with all my heart I longed to become a wise and brilliant woman, for John's sake, and as a step towards beauty, according to Miss Coleman's words. "I don't hold with women bein' doctors," said Ma, as she energetically knitted into the middle of her needle before looking up. "I don't know what we're comin' to, these days." "There, there, Ma, I don't know why women shouldn't be doctors, if they want to. They make better nusses'n men. Mebbe--mebbe Sis'll be gettin' married some day, an' I tell ye a little doctorin' know-how is mighty handy in a house. A doctor an' a lawyer, now, would be a gret team, right in the fambly, like. Well, Sis, we'll see; we'll see." I knew that the matter was practically settled; and there was little sleep for me, or for any one, that night in the old farm-house. I stayed at home until September, and then one morning Father drove me again to the little yellow station whose door opens wide upon all the world. "Well, good-by, Helen 'Lizy," he said. "Good-by, Father." For weeks I had been eager to be off, but as the train began to move and I looked back at his patient figure--he made no more show of his deep emotion than if the parting were for a day--a big lump rose in my throat at leaving him and Ma--old before their time with toil and privation and planning and striving for me. I knew how lonely it would be in the sitting room that night without me. Father with closed eyes jogging away in his chair, Mother bolt upright and thin and prim, forever at her knitting or sewing; no sound but the chair and the ticking clock upon the shelf--that night and every night. And the early bedtime and the early morning and the long, long day--what a contrast to this! I pressed my face against the window, but a rush of tears blurred all the dear, familiar landmarks--Barzillai Foote's red barn, the grain elevator at the siding, the Hartsville road trailing off over the prairie; I would have given worlds to be in the top buggy again, moving homeward, instead of going swiftly out, out, alone, into the world. Three months ago! I did not dream what miracles were in store! And so one day I reached the New York I had dreamed about. It wasn't as a shrine of learning that it appealed to me, altogether; but as a wonderful place, beautiful, glittering, feverish with motion, abounding with gayety, thronged with people, bubbling with life. How it fascinated me!