"Yes, there's a time when a child stops being a baby and you see that it's beginning to be a little girl," Mrs. Sheridan mused; "but it's some time later before you know _what sort_ of a little girl it is. And then at--say fifteen or sixteen--you see the change again, the little girl growing into a grown girl--a young lady. And for awhile you sort of lose track of her again, until all of a sudden you say: 'Well, Norma's going to be sociable--and like people!' or: 'Rose is going to be a gentle, shy girl----'" Norma knew the mildly moralizing tone, and that she was getting a sermon. "You never knew that I was going to be a good housekeeper!" she asserted, inclined toward contrariety. "I think you're going through another change now, Baby," her aunt said. "You've become a woman too fast. You don't quite know where you are!" This was so unexpectedly acute that Norma was inwardly surprised, and a little impressed. She sat down at one end of the clean little kitchen table, and rested her face in her hands, and looked resentfully at the older woman. "Then you _don't_ think I'm a good housekeeper," she said, looking hurt. "I think you will be whatever you want to be, Norma, it'll all be in your hands now," Mrs. Sheridan answered, seriously. "You're a woman, now; you're Wolf's wife; you've reached an age when you can choose and decide for yourself. You can be--you always could be--the best child the Lord ever made, or you can fret and brood over what you haven't got." The shrewd kindly eye seemed looking into Norma's very soul. The girl dropped her hard bright stare, and looked sulky. "I don't see what _I'm_ doing!" she muttered. "I can't help wanting--what other people that are no better than I, have!" "Yes, but haven't you enough, Norma? Think of women like poor Kitty Barry----" "Oh, Kitty Barry--Kitty Barry!" Norma burst out, angrily. "It isn't my fault that Kitty Barry has trouble; _I_ had nothing to do with it! Look at people like Leslie--what she wastes on one new fur coat would keep the Barrys for a year! Eighty-two hundred dollars she paid for her birthday coat! And that's _nothing_! Katrina Thayer----" "Norma--Norma--Norma!" her aunt interrupted, reproachfully. "What have you to do with girls like the Thayer girl? Why, there aren't twenty girls in the country as rich as that. That doesn't affect _you_, if there's something you can do for the poor and unfortunate----" "It _does_ affect me! I can't"--Norma dropped her tone, and glanced at her aunt. She knew that she was misbehaving--"I can't help inheriting a love for money," she said, breathing hard. "I know perfectly well who I am--who my mother is," she ended, with a half-defiant and half-fearful sob in her voice. "How do you mean that you know about your mother, Norma?" Mrs. Sheridan demanded, sharply. "Well"--Norma had calmed a little, and she was a trifle nervous--"Chris told me; and Aunt Alice knows, too--that Aunt Annie is my mother," she said.