the mind is restless, she had an acute desire to do
something with her hands. She wanted to go ahead with Marguerite's hat,
but mother, who had a headache and was cross, put her foot down. "Not
another minute of dawdling till you write that thesis!" she said, and
she might as well have been Gabriel--or whoever it is who trumpets on
the day of doom.

So Missy once more took up tablet and pencil. But what's the use
commanding your mind, "Now, write!" Your mind can't write, can it?--till
it knows what it's going to write about. No matter how much the rest of
you wants to write.

At supper-time Missy had no appetite. Mother was too ill to be at the
table, but father noticed it.

"Haven't caught mamma's headache, have you?" he asked solicitously.

Missy shook her head; she wished she could tell father it was her soul
that ached. Perhaps father sensed something of this for, after glancing
at her two or three times, he said:

"Tell you what!--Suppose you go to the lecture with me to-night. Mamma
says she won't feel able. What do you say?"

Missy didn't care a whit to hear the disgusting Dobson, but she felt
the reason for her reluctance mightn't be understood--might even arouse
hateful merriment, for Aunt Nettie was sitting there listening. So she
said evasively:

"I think mother wants me to work on my thesis."

"Oh, I can fix it with mother all right," said father.

Missy started to demur further but, so listless was her spirit, she
decided it would be easier to go than to try getting out of it. She
wouldn't have to pay attention to the detestable Dobson; and she always
loved to go places with father.

And it was pleasant, after he had "fixed it" with mother, to walk along
the dusky streets with him, her arm tucked through his as if she were a
grown-up. Walking with him thus, not talking very much but feeling the
placidity and sense of safety that always came over her in father's
society, she almost forgot the offensive celebrity awaiting them in the
Opera House.

Afterward Missy often thought of her reluctance to go to that lecture,
of how narrowly she had missed seeing Dobson. The narrow margins of
fate! What if she hadn't gone! Oh, life is thrillingly uncertain and
interwoven and mysterious!

The Opera House was crowded. There were a lot of women there, the
majority of them staid Cherryvale matrons who were regular subscribers
to the Lyceum Course, but Missy, regarding them severely, wondered if
they were