"You must dance, I suppose?" This Charley took to be a purely rhetorical question. As well say to her, "You must breathe, I suppose?" Mrs. Payson turned to her daughter Belle. "This is with your permission?" Belle nibbled celery tranquilly. "We talked it over. But Charley makes her own decisions in matters like this you know, mother." As with one accord Great-aunt Charlotte and Aunt Lottie turned and regarded Charley. A certain awe was in their faces, unknown to them. "But why exactly Friday night?" persisted Mrs. Payson. "Lottie, ring." Lottie rang, obediently. Hulda entered. "That was mighty good soup, mother," said Henry Kemp. Mrs. Payson refused to be mollified. Ignored the compliment. "Why exactly Friday night, if you please?" Charley wiggled a little with pleasure. "I hoped you'd ask me that. I'm dying to talk about it. Oo! Roast chickens! All brown and crackly! Well, you see, my actual class-work in merchandising and business efficiency will be about finished at the end of the month. After that, the university places you, you know." "Places you!" Mrs. Carrie Payson had always had an uneasy feeling about her granddaughter's choice of a career. That she would have a career Charley never for a moment allowed them to doubt. She never called it a career. She spoke of it as "a job." In range her choice swung from professional dancing (for which she was technically and temperamentally fitted) to literature (for the creating of which she had no talent). Between these widely divergent points she paused briefly to consider the fascinations of professions such as licensed aviatrix (she had never flown); private secretary to a millionaire magnate (again the influence of the matinee); woman tennis champion (she held her own in a game against the average male player but stuck her tongue between her teeth when she served); and Influence for Good or Evil (by which she meant vaguely something in the Madame de Staël and general salon line). She had never expressed a desire to be a nurse.