"We won’t discuss that, my child," I broke in. The expense had indeed occupied my mind—but I had formed a plan for that. "Tell me what you would like best to study—to be?" "That’s the trouble, Uncle Ranny," she replied pathetically. "What can I be?—Perhaps I might work for Mr. Andrews?" "Modern girls," I informed her, "judging by our fiction, invariably develop literary, dramatic or histrionic talent. She must act, write fiction, or preferably plays. Journalism and settlement work are no longer fashionable. If the worst comes to the worst, they turn militant suffragists, but even that is on the wane; but the two careers are not incompatible. Don’t you feel the urge in your young bones? Which of the arts is it that is calling you? The pen? The stage? Speak, Alicia—for this is the critical hour!" She detected raillery in my voice and laughed softly. "I know you are making fun of me, Uncle Ranny," she said, "but it’s not of me alone. All the same, I wish I did have some talent, but, oh, I know I haven’t! Sometimes—I wish—I think—oh, Uncle Ranny, I am ashamed to tell you what I—" and without finishing her sentence she covered her face with her hands and I noted that her neck was suffused with a deep blush. "But you must tell me, my dear," I gently took her hands from her face. "Haven’t I just become your parent and guardian by ironclad legal adoption? And a terribly stern parent and guardian I am—make no mistake about that!" "Well," she gazed downward shamefacedly, still exquisitely blushing, "I suppose I must, then. Sometimes I think, Uncle Ranny," she went on with deliberate firmness, "that there is one thing girls always think of, but never talk about—that is more important than any of the others. Oh, I suppose I am terribly improper and immodest, but if I am, it’s because—I don’t know any better—so you’ll have to forgive me. But, oh, I suppose—he’ll come some day and—to—to make a home and—and to bring up children seems—more wonderful than anything else! You’ve made me say it, Uncle Ranny!" she turned away with tears of vexation—"I suppose I am horrid—but you’ve made me tell you and I told you. Can’t a girl study to be—for that—as for anything else?" And still tormented by her brazen immodesty, she plucked yellowing leaves agitatedly and scattered them to the winnowing breeze. As she was turned from me, she could not have seen my arms going out suddenly as if to take her, and then falling again to my sides. I longed to embrace her and to crown her with all the glory of womanhood. But my conscience warned me away. In my heart, however, happiness leaped up like the lark I have never seen and warbled joyously a divine melody that I had never heard. It required courage for Alicia, a young girl, to confess what she had confessed. And courage joined to all the other qualities I knew her possessed of must produce the best that is in womanhood.