a crooked stick. But she got so used to being the center of
interest that when she found herself growing old and plain, she couldn't
think of any way to keep attention fixed on her except by having these
collapses. You know you mustn't call the attacks 'fits.' Venie's far too
refined for that."

Kate smiled broadly at her mother's distinctive brand of humor. She
loved it all--Miss Sampson's fits, her mother's jokes; even the fact
that when they went out to supper she sat where she used in the old days
when she had worn a bib beneath her chin.

"Oh, the plates, the cups, the everything!" cried Kate, ridiculously
lifting a piece of the "best china" to her lips and kissing it.

"Absurdity!" reproved her mother, but she adored the girl's
extravagances just the same.

"Everything's glorious," Kate insisted. "Cream cheese and parsley! Did
you make it, mummy? Currant rolls--oh, the wonders! Martha Underwood,
don't dare to die without showing me how to make those currant rolls.
Veal loaf--now, what do you think of that? Why, at Foster we went hungry
sometimes--not for lack of quantity, of course, but because of the
quality. I used to be dreadfully ashamed of the fact that there we were,
dozens of us women in that fine hall, and not one of us with enough
domestic initiative to secure a really good table. I tried to head an
insurrection and to have now one girl and now another supervise the
table, but the girls said they hadn't come to college to keep house."

"Yes, yes," chimed in her mother excitedly; "that's where the whole
trouble with college for women comes in. They not only don't go to
college to keep house, but most of them mean not to keep it when they
come out. We allowed you to go merely because you overbore us. You used
to be a terrible little tyrant, Katie,--almost as bad as--"

She brought herself up suddenly.

"As bad as whom, mummy?"

There was a step on the front porch and Mrs. Barrington was spared the
need for answering.

"There's your father," she said, signaling Kate to meet him.

* * * * *

Dr. Barrington was tall, spare, and grizzled. The torpor of the little
town had taken the light from his eyes and reduced the tempo of his
movements, but, in spite of all, he had preserved certain vivid features
of his personality. He had the long, educated hands of the surgeon and
the tyrannical aspect of the physician who has struggled all his life
with disobedience and perver