"Go away! There are none of the relatives you can visit. The Tuttles all feel the disgrace as if it were their own. As for your father's folks--" "I don't mean to visit. I mean to work--to live." Mrs. Fanshaw focussed her parochial mind upon this outlandish suggestion, assuming, as was her habit with novel impressions, an air of truculent disapproval. "Perhaps you still think you can gallivant about the country like a man?" she remarked. "No. I've got over that. I shall find some woman's work." "You mean you'll cook, scrub, do the servant's drudgery you've learned here? That would be a nice tale to go the rounds of the Springs!" "I would cook or scrub if I had to, but I've been taught other things. One of the girls who's leaving this fall--her name is Amy Jeffries--knew no more about earning a living than I when she came here, but she has an eight-dollar-a-week place waiting for her in New York. She's going with a ready-made cloak firm. It was Miss Archer who got her the place, and she says when the time comes she can probably do as well by me." "New York!" Mrs. Fanshaw shied with rural timidity from the fascinating name. "You in New York! I must get Amelia's opinion. What if it should prove a way out!" During the remainder of the call the talk strayed mainly in a maze of Shawnee Springs gossip which Jean followed in a lethargy beneath which throbbed an ache. She had grown to value her home, not for what it had been, but for what it might be, and to realize that it was beyond doubt the more a home without her, cut deep. Mrs. Fanshaw had amputated an ideal. It in no way eased the smart to feel that her mother intended no downright brutality. Indeed, as Jean did her the justice to perceive, she tried in her clumsy way to be kind. She reverted again to the agreeable change in the girl's voice, approved her quieter manner, and, looking closer, even discerned a neatness in general upon which she bestowed measured praise. It was in the midst of these final note-takings that she detected her daughter in a vain attempt to conceal some object in the folds of a pocketless dress. "What are you doing?" she demanded in abrupt suspicion. "What are you hiding from me?" The girl started. "Nothing," she said evasively. "Nothing! You were always truthful at least." "I mean nothing important." Mrs. Fanshaw laid a firm grasp upon the shrinking hand, and dragged its secret to light. "Embroidery!" she exclaimed. Jean's cheeks were poppies. "Yes," she faltered. "Whose is it?" "Mine." The reluctant monosyllables whipped Mrs. Fanshaw's curiosity wide awake. "No more nonsense," she charged. "Tell me at once who gave you this." "Nobody," confessed Jean faintly. "I--I made it." "You!" A pair of glasses, black-rimmed and formidable, bore instantly upon the marvel and searched it stitch by stitch.