Oh, dear--how dreadfully fast time passes. It seems only a little while
ago we were planning for the winter and now here comes Mrs. Hicks about
new summer covers for the furniture, and Joe Laney wants to know if
there's going to be any painting done and I haven't thought of any
summer clothes--and with those two great growing girls! I suppose if
we're going to the seashore we ought to make some reservations, too----"
and Mrs. Westley concluded her plaint with a sigh that came from her
very toes.

John Westley, from the depths of the great armed chair where he
stretched, laughed at her serious face. But the expression of his own
reflected the truth of what she had said.

"It's the rush we live in, Mary. Why don't you cut out the seashore and
find a quiet place--out of this torrent? Something--like Kettle." The
mention of Kettle brought him suddenly to a thought of Jerry.

"Well, my Jerry-girl's year of school is almost up. What next?"

Mrs. Westley laid down her knitting. "Yes--what next?" she asked.

"Somehow, I can't picture Jerry going back to Miller's Notch
and--staying there----"

"That's it--I've thought of it often. Have we been doing the girl a
kindness? After all, John, contentment is the greatest thing in this
world, and perhaps we've hurt the dear child by bringing her here and
letting her have a taste of--this sort of thing."

John Westley regarded his sister-in-law's plump, kindly face with
amusement. She had the best heart in the world and the biggest, but she
had not the discernment to know that there were treasures even in
Miller's Notch and Sunnyside, and, anyway----

"Isn't contentment, Mary, a thing that depends on something inside of
us, rather than our surroundings?"

She nodded, speculatively.

"And I rather think my girl from Kettle will be contented anywhere.
She's gone ahead fast here. I was talking to Dr. Caton about her. He
says she is amazingly intense in her work. I suppose that has come from
her way of living there at Sunnyside. But what can the school there at
Miller's Notch give her now?

"And what is there for a girl, living in a small place like that, after
school? Contentment _does_ depend upon our state of mind, I grant, but
one's surroundings affect that state of mind--so there you are! How is a
girl going to be happy if she knows that she is far superior mentally to
everything that makes up her life? Jerry will grow to womanhood in her
little mountain village--marry some