And both girls laughed gayly. They were having tea in Julia's drawing-room on a cold bright afternoon in May. "I'll miss Dad most," pursued Barbara seriously. "Mother's so much with Ted now, anyway." She frowned at the fire. "Mother's curious, Ju," she added presently. "Every one says she's an ideal mother, and so on, and I suppose she is, but--" "You're more like your father, anyway," Julia suggested in the pause. "It's not only that," said Barbara slowly, "but Mother has never been in sympathy with any one of us! Ned deceived her, Sally deceived her, Theodora went deliberately against her advice, and broke her heart, and Con and Jane don't really respect her opinion at all! I'm the oldest, her first born--" "And she loves you dearly," Julia said soothingly. "Used to Ju, when I was a baby. And loves me theoretically now. But she has taken my not marrying to heart much more than the curious marriages Ned and the girls have made! Hints about old maids, and stories about her own popularity as a girl, regardless of the fact that no one wanted me--" "Oh, Babbie!" "Well, no one did!" Barbara laughed a little dryly. "Why, not two months ago," she went on, "that little sprig of a Paul Smith called on Con, and Mother engineered me out of the room, and said something laughingly to Richie and Ted about not wanting to stand in Con's way, 'one old maid was enough in a family!'" "Maddening! Yes, I know," Julia said, laughing and shaking her head. "I've heard her a hundred times!" "Of course it's all love and kisses, now," Barbara added, "and Francis is a bold, big thief, and how can she give up her dear big girl--" "Oh, Barbara, don't be bitter!" "Well," Barbara flung her head back as if she tossed the subject aside, "I suppose I am bitter! And why you're not, Ju, I can't understand, for you never had one tenth the chance I did!" "No," Julia assented gravely, "I never did. If my mother had kept me with her--and she could have done it--if she hadn't left my father--he loved me so--it would all have been different. Mothers are strange, Babby, they have so much power--or seem to! It seems to me that one could do so much to straighten things out for the poor little baby brains; this is worth while, and this isn't worth while, and so on! Suppose"--Julia poured herself a fresh cup of tea, and leaned back comfortably in her chair--"suppose you had young daughters, Bab," said she, "what would you do, differently from your mother, I mean?" "Oh, I don't know!" Barbara said, "only it seems funny that mothers can't help their daughters more. Half my life is lived now, probably, yet Mother goes right on theorizing, she--she doesn't get down to _facts_, somehow! I don't know--" "It all comes down to this," Julia said briskly, as Barbara's voice trailed into silence, "sitting around and waiting for some one to ask her to marry him is not a sufficiently absorbing life work for the average young woman!"