“I hope you _are_ going to be contented, dear,” said Mrs. Grafton, as her tall son relieved the rubber-plant of its burden, and clattered noisily out of the room. “I realize that after four years of the jolly intercourse you have had with the girls, and the growing college life, we must seem slow and prosaic to you here; nothing much happens when you are away. Of course, I don’t miss things as much as you will. _I’m_ used to the old slow way, and besides, I’m too busy to have time to think of what is lacking. But I don’t want you to be hungry for what is not. The happiest thing I’ve had to think about all these four years, has been your home-coming, but I’ve been a little worried about your coming, sometimes. Do you think you are going to be contented with us?” Barbara’s answer was judicial. “Why, yes, I think so,” she said. “Of course I shall miss the college life, and the intellectual stimulus I had there, but _I’m_ going to work hard, too. All the theories I learned at Vassar are just ready to be put into practice, and I have so much to give the world that I can hardly wait to take my pen in hand. Oh, I am so glad, mother, that my life-work is laid out for me. I tell you frankly that I never could stand living in Auburn if I were not busy. The sordidness of the workers, and the pettiness of the idlers, would make me desperate. But I shall go to work at once, and write—write—all the things I have been longing to give utterance to for four years.” “But you can’t write all the time,” said Mrs. Grafton. “No, I don’t intend to. There are other things to do. There has never been any organized philanthropy in Auburn, and there is plenty of work for somebody in that line. I hope, too, that I may fall in with some congenial people who will care to do some regular, systematic study with me,—though I suppose they will be hard to find in a town of this size. Then, too, I thought that I might help Susan.” Mrs. Grafton’s busy needle flew as she talked. “How, dear?” “Oh, in her studies. Susan and I kept together in high-school days, and I think that it has always been a tragedy in her life that she couldn’t have a college education. She has a fine mind,—not original, you know, but clear-thinking,—and she loves study. Poor girl, I can help her so much. And of course it will be a mental stimulus to me, too.” “I’m afraid Susan won’t have time.” “Why, what is she doing?” “Housework,” replied her mother. “She is cooking, and caring for her father and brothers, and she does it well, too.” “What a shame!” “What, to do it well?” “You know what I mean, you wicked mother. A shame to let all that mental ability go to waste, while the pots and pans are being scoured. It doesn’t take brains to do housework.”