"Think of it! Think of it! Only think of it! I didn't know how it was going to come about, but I was sure I was going to get it somehow!" the young girl cried, dancing about the room excitedly. "Whenever I was afraid something was going to keep me from it, I used to say, 'I will! I will! I will go to high school!' Oh, isn't it too lovely! Do you think my saying it made any difference?" she asked eagerly; and the quaint couple, who were born two generations in advance of the birth cry of New Thought, laughed innocently and made no reply. When the floodgates of surprise and emotion were opened, and she began to talk of her hopes and fears, it was but natural that she should speak of her struggles for personal improvement, though this was instinctively done when Mr. Hornby was absent. Curiously enough, some of her points of information were as helpful to Susan Hornby as they had been to her. Mrs. Hornby knew the rules of good grammar, but many little observances of table manners had changed since her youth. She read and was well informed on general topics of the day, but her life for more than fifteen years had been spent with Nathan and with the hired men who ate at her table, and she had become careless of small things, so that she listened with an amused smile, but with real profit as well, to Lizzie's confidences that "You shouldn't cross your knife and fork on your plate when you are through eating, like the hired men, but lay them side by side, neat and straight"; that "You shouldn't eat with your knife, neither," and that "To sip your coffee out of your saucer with a noise like grasshoppers' wings was just awful!" She, too, was brushing up to go to Topeka, and while much in advance of her husband or any of her associates in society matters, she had lived the life of the farm, and to the end of her existence would be conscious of the inequalities of her education. Of this she said nothing to the child, but listened and remembered. Occasionally she reminded the girl that they might not go to Topeka, but even as she warned she was quickening the subconscious mind to aid in recording any fact which might be advantageous when she herself got there, and her love for the child grew. The girl was part of the scheme. In a week she had become one of the family.