IN SIMILAR FORM 16mo, Boards, net 50c. Leather, net $1.00 _Mary Raymond Shipman Andrews_ The Perfect Tribute The Lifted Bandage The Courage of the Commonplace The Counsel Assigned _Maltbie Davenport Babcock_ The Success of Defeat _Katharine Holland Brown_ The Messenger _Richard Harding Davis_ The Consul _Marion Harland_ Looking Westward _Robert Herrick_ The Master of the Inn _Frederick Landis_ The Angel of Lonesome Hill _Francis E. Leupp_ A Day with Father _Alice Duer Miller_ Things _Robert Louis Stevenson_ A Christmas Sermon Prayers Written at Vailima Aes Triplex _Isobel Strong_ Robert Louis Stevenson _Henry van Dyke_ School of Life The Spirit of Christmas THINGS THINGS BY Alice Duer Miller Author of “The Blue Arch,” “Calderon’s Prisoner,” etc. NEW YORK Charles Scribner’s Sons 1914 _Copyright, 1914, by Charles Scribner’s Sons_ _Published April, 1914_ [Illustration] THINGS THINGS I The great alienist sat down at his desk, and having emptied his mind of all other impressions, held it up like a dipper for his new patient to fill. Large, blond, and handsome, she was plainly accustomed to being listened to. Before she had fairly undone her furs and folded her hands within her muff, the doctor’s lateral vision had told him that, whatever her problems, it was not about her own nervous system that she had come to consult him. Not too quickly her story began to take shape. Her household, her husband, her four children--three small boys and an older daughter, a girl of seventeen.... “My only thought has been my children, Dr. Despard.” “Your _only_ thought, Mrs. Royce?” She assented. The daughter was the problem--the daughter of seventeen. “She and I have been such friends; I have always been a friend to my children, I hope, as well as a parent. And Celia’s little arrangements, her clothes and her small parties, have been as much my interests as hers--more, perhaps. The bond between us has been peculiarly close until the last year or so. Lately a rebellious spirit has begun to develop. I have tried to make allowances, but naturally there are certain questions of manners and deportment--small but important--about which one cannot yield. I am almost ashamed to confess how unaffectionate are the terms that we have reached. The situation will strike you as a strange one between a mother and daughter----” He shook his head. “You are by no means the only mother and daughter whose relations are unsatisfactory.”