and insignificant to be worth living. But of course if
incompetent strugglers like the Barrys were to be brought into the
question, then Norma might begin to feel the solid ground melting from
beneath her feet.

She did not offer the cake or the ham to Aunt Kate, as contributions
toward the small Barrys' lunch next day, nor did she invite any one of
them to visit her. Her aunt, if she noted these omissions, made no
comment upon them.

"I declare you are getting to be a real woman, Norma," she said.

"I suppose everyone grows up," Norma assented, cheerlessly.

"Yes, there's a time when a child stops being a baby and you see that
it's beginning to be a little girl," Mrs. Sheridan mused; "but it's some
time later before you know _what sort_ of a little girl it is. And then
at--say fifteen or sixteen--you see the change again, the little girl
growing into a grown girl--a young lady. And for awhile you sort of lose
track of her again, until all of a sudden you say: 'Well, Norma's going
to be sociable--and like people!' or: 'Rose is going to be a gentle, shy
girl----'"

Norma knew the mildly moralizing tone, and that she was getting a
sermon.

"You never knew that I was going to be a good housekeeper!" she
asserted, inclined toward contrariety.

"I think you're going through another change now, Baby," her aunt said.
"You've become a woman too fast. You don't quite know where you are!"

This was so unexpectedly acute that Norma was inwardly surprised, and a
little impressed. She sat down at one end of the clean little kitchen
table, and rested her face in her hands, and looked resentfully at the
older woman.

"Then you _don't_ think I'm a good housekeeper," she said, looking hurt.

"I think you will be whatever you want to be, Norma, it'll all be in
your hands now," Mrs. Sheridan answered, seriously. "You're a woman,
now; you're Wolf's wife; you've reached an age when you can choose and
decide for yourself. You can be--you always could be--the best child the
Lord ever made, or you can fret and brood over what you haven't got."

The shrewd kindly eye seemed looking into Norma's very soul. The girl
dropped her hard bright stare, and looked sulky.

"I don't see what _I'm_ doing!" she muttered. "I can't help
wanting--what other people that are no better than I, have!"

"Yes, but haven't you enough, Norma? Think of women like poor Kitty
Barry----"

"Oh, Kitty Barry--Kitty Barry!" Norma burst out, angrily. "It isn't