Dr. Grafton laughed,—a merry, contagious laugh, that rivaled his medical skill in winning his patients. “I thought as much,” he said. “Getting admission to her room nowadays is attended with all the formalities of the Masonic ritual, and she goes about with ink on her fingers and ink on her nose. I suppose she is fired by the ambition of the Banbury Cross lady in making ‘music wherever she goes.’ Poor little Barbara; she’s taking herself so very seriously, these days! She feels that she must gush forth a stream of living water for thirsty mankind, forgetting, dear little lass, that she is not a spring yet, but only a rain-barrel. Four years of college have filled her, but she doesn’t realize that now is the time to keep all the bung-holes shut. I suppose we must all pass through that think-we-are-artists disease, but Barbara seems to have an aggravated case.” “She has been encouraged in it a good deal.” “Yes, I know she has,—more’s the pity. A prodigy now and then must be encouraging to a college faculty, but it’s a bit hard on the prodigy herself, and harder still on the prodigy’s family. Intellectual lights ought to be hidden under a ton, instead of a bushel, so it wouldn’t be so easy to dig them out. I believe, myself, that Barbara _has_ a fine mind, and unusual ability, but, dear heart, she’s only a child! She has to live before she can write.” “I haven’t dared tell her that yet,” said her mother; “I don’t want even to seem to discourage her. And you know how confident Barbara is.” “I wish she were a bit less _self_-confident; she’s bound to be disappointed, and I’m afraid that she sets her hopes so high that the fall, when it comes, will be a hard one. I wish, too, that she wasn’t quite so serious about it all. Her saving grace of humor seems to have utterly deserted her at this trying period of her existence.” “That’s a way that humor sometimes has,” said Mrs. Grafton. “The very jolliest, drollest woman I ever knew confided to me once that her sense of humor had entirely deserted her, at one time. She had been out sailing with the man who afterward became her husband, and during the course of the evening he had done a little love-making. ‘He called me Sweetie,’ she said to me. ‘Think of it! Sweetie! Why, it’s as bad as Pettie, or Lambie!’ And the worst of it was that it didn’t even seem funny to me until after I thought it over at home. ‘When love comes in the door, humor flies out of the window,’ she said; and I suppose it may be the same way with genius.”