“My dear young lady,” he said, “I have called to see you in your own interests. I do not, as you perhaps know, approve of your schemes. I consider them--ah--subversive of the best interests of the home! But I think you mean well, though mistakenly. Now I fear you are not aware that this-ah--ill-considered undertaking of yours, is giving rise to considerable adverse comment in the community. There is--ah--there is a great deal being said about this business of yours which I am sure you would regret if you knew it. Do you think it is wise; do you think it is--ah--right, my dear Miss Bell, to attempt to carry on a--a place of this sort, without the presence of a--of a Matron of assured standing?” Diantha smiled rather coldly. “May I trouble you to step into the back parlor, Dr. Aberthwaite,” she said; and then; “May I have the pleasure of presenting to you Mrs. Henderson Bell--my mother?” ***** “Wasn't it great!” said Mrs. Weatherstone; “I was there you see,--I'd come to call on Mrs. Bell--she's a dear,--and in came Mrs. Thaddler--” “Mrs. Thaddler?” “O I know it was old Aberthwaite, but he represented Mrs. Thaddler and her clique, and had come there to preach to Diantha about propriety--I heard him,--and she brought him in and very politely introduced him to her mother!--it was rich, Isabel.” “How did Diantha manage it?” asked her friend. “She's been trying to arrange it for ever so long. Of course her father objected--you'd know that. But there's a sister--not a bad sort, only very limited; she's taken the old man to board, as it were, and I guess the mother really set her foot down for once--said she had a right to visit her own daughter!” “It would seem so,” Mrs. Porne agreed. “I _am_ so glad! It will be so much easier for that brave little woman now.” It was. Diantha held her mother in her arms the night she came, and cried tike a baby. “O mother _dear!_” she sobbed, “I'd no idea I should miss you so much. O you blessed comfort!” Her mother cried a bit too; she enjoyed this daughter more than either of her older children, and missed her more. A mother loves all her children, naturally; but a mother is also a person--and may, without sin, have personal preferences. She took hold of Diantha's tangled mass of papers with the eagerness of a questing hound. “You've got all the bills, of course,” she demanded, with her anxious rising inflection. “Every one,” said the girl. “You taught me that much. What puzzles me is to make things balance. I'm making more than I thought in some lines, and less in others, and I can't make it come out straight.” “It won't, altogether, till the end of the year I dare say,” said Mrs. Bell, “but let's get clear as far as we can. In the first place we must separate your business,--see how much each one pays.”