“You dear little girl! Are you such a stranger to your own home people? I don’t believe that Matthew Arnold ever wrote anything that your mother doesn’t know. Where she gets time, with all her multitudinous duties, to love Shelley, and live Browning, and keep abreast of Stephen Phillips and Yeats, I don’t see; but she does it, somehow. She is one of the few true poetry-lovers I know. As for your father, I have heard him quote Riley and Harte to you children, because, I always supposed, he thought you could understand them. But he himself doesn’t stop there. He isn’t so widely read as your mother, but the old poets he has made his own. He knows his yellow Shakespeare from cover to cover. How have you ever lived in the same house with them and yet been such a stranger? Your father and mother, dear, are the cultivated people of Auburn.” Surprise was written strongly on every feature of Barbara’s face. “That’s the trouble with college life. You young people never get the opportunity to know your own families, nowadays. At the time when you are just beginning to be old enough to appreciate your parents, you are sent away. Then you go to work, or marry, and leave home without knowing the real wealth that often lies at your own doors. Did you ever read Emerson’s ‘Days’?” Barbara shook her head. Mrs. Willowby turned to the open book-shelves, and took down a shabby green volume. “It has your mother’s own marks,” she said, as she turned to the page, where a lead pencil had traced a delicate line about the words,— “Daughters of Time, the hypocritic Days, Muffled and dumb like barefoot dervishes, And marching single in an endless file, Bring diadems and fagots in their hands. To each they offer gifts after his will, Bread, kingdom, stars, and sky that holds them all I, in my pleachèd garden, watched the pomp, Forgot my morning wishes, hastily Took a few herbs and apples, and the Day Turned and departed silent. I, too late, Under her solemn fillet saw the scorn.” There was a moment’s pause after the stately lines were finished. “I understand,” said Barbara, finding her voice. “But I never knew,—before. It _is_ true, Mrs. Willowby, about losing some things by college life. I’m beginning to think that there are lots of things to be learned at home.” The gentle brown eyes smiled at the new tone of humility. “My dear little girl,” began Mrs. Willowby, “if you have discovered that, you have learned the very thing for which you were sent to college. The most important lessons in the word are not learned from textbooks, and all—Goodness, Barbara, what on earth was that?” Somewhere from the back regions of the house had come the sound of a mighty explosion. It was followed by the sound of breaking glass, and a shrill shriek. [Illustration: IN THE MIDDLE OF THE FLOOR SAT THE IDGIT] “The Idgit!” breathed Barbara. The Emerson slid to the floor, and the hostess and guest rushed to the kitchen.