THE Overland Passenger was clanking its way across the prairies of the middle West. Barbara, sitting on one of the stuffy red-plush seats, pressed her face against the window-pane, and looked out into the night. There was little to see,—the long, monotonous stretches of land, cloaked in shadows, with dim lights showing from a few farmhouses, and a wide expanse of sky, freckled with stars, above. But Barbara was nearing home, and the dull pain which had been with her since the last good-bys at college was forgotten, as her eyes drank in every familiar detail of the shadowy landscape. Above the purr and hiss of the engine sounded the jerky refrain of the rails, and the girl’s heart echoed the words.

“Near-home, near-home,” it throbbed.

The noise of the train deepened as the piers of a bridge flashed by. A porter with a lighted lantern passed through the car, and a traveling agent in the seat ahead began to gather up his hand-baggage. But Barbara still gazed out of the window, over the great piles of pine that marked the boundary of the Auburn lumber-yard, towards a dim light that shone down from the hill.

“Auburn, Auburn! This way out,” called the brakeman.

A thin, gray man stood at the steps of the car almost before the wheels ceased to move. His voice and his hands went up simultaneously.

“Hel-lo, little girl,” he said to Barbara.

“Dear old Dad!” said Barbara to him.

“We’ll have to trust to the livery,” said Dr. Grafton. “Maud S. has had a hard day, and I didn’t have the heart to have her harnessed again to-night.”

“There’s a rummage-sale hat,” laughed Barbara, as a driver in a shabby suit of livery and an ill-fitting top hat approached for her baggage checks.

Auburn knew naught of cabs. A “hack line,” including perhaps three dozen carriages which had passed beyond the wedding and funeral stage, attended passengers to and from the railway station. In a spirit of metropolitanism which seized the town at rare intervals, the proprietors of the “line” had decided to livery their drivers. So they had attended a rummage sale, given by the women members of an indigent church, and had purchased therefrom every top hat in sight, regardless of size, shape, or vintage. These they had distributed among their drivers in an equally reckless and care-free way. Auburn, as a whole, had not yet ceased to thrill with pride at her liveried service; but those of her inhabitants who happened to be blessed with a sense of humor experienced a sensation other than that of pride, upon beholding the pompous splendor of Banker Willowby’s last season’s hat held in place by the eyebrows of Peanuts Barker, or Piety Sanborn’s decorous beaver perched upon the manly brow of Spike Hannegan.

The mutual enjoyment of this other sensation renewed the old feeling of fellowship between Barbara and her father.

“It’s good to have you back, Girl,” he said.

Barbara crept a bit closer. “It’s good to be here,” she answered.

The Grafton house stood at the top of the longest hill in Auburn, and it was ten minutes more before the carriage stopped at the maple tree in front of the doctor’s home. The electric lights of Auburn, for economical reasons, were put out upon the arrival of the moon, and it was still and dark when the two started up the walk together. The stars hung low near the horizon, a sleepy bird was talking to himself in the willow tree, and the air was full of the bitter-sweet of cherry blossoms. A little gray, shaggy dog came bounding over the terrace to meet them, and the doorway was full of children’s heads.

Barbara’s mother stood on the front porch. Her eyes were soft and full, and her face was the glad-sorry kind. She did not say a word, only opened her arms, and the girl went in.

The children’s greetings were characteristic. Eighteen-year-old Jack added a hearty smack to his “Hello, Barb”; David laid a pale little cheek against his sister’s glowing one; and the Kid thrust his school report into Barbara’s hand, and inquired in eager tones what gifts were forthcoming. Only one member of the family circle was absent.

“Gassy’s gone to bed,” exclaimed Jack. “She’s got a grouch.”

“I have not,” retorted an aggressive voice. “Hello, Barbara.” A thin little girl of eleven, in a nightgown, her head covered with bumps of red hair wrapped about kid-curlers, seized Barbara from behind. There was a vigorous hug, which sent a thrill of surprise to the big sister’s heart, and Gassy became her own undemonstrative self again.

“Gee, you ought to see how you look!” said Jack.

“You ought not, ’cause ’twould make you unhappy,” retorted Gassy.

“I should think you’d feel unhappy, sleeping on that tiara of bumps. Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown. You look just like a tomato-worm.”

“Careful, Jack,” cautioned his father.

But the warning came too late. The small girl rushed at her tormentor, leapt upon him, and thrust a cold little hand inside of his gray sweater.

“There, there, children, don’t squabble before Barbara; she’s forgotten that you are not always friends,” said Mrs. Grafton. “Run back to bed, Cecilia; you’ll take cold. The rest of us are going, too. It’s long past bedtime.”

Barbara had expected to find the first nights away from her college room lonely ones; but the big four-poster, ugly as it had always seemed to her, was an improvement upon the cot that was a divan by day and a bed by night. Blessed, too, was the silence that was almost noisy, out-of-doors, and the good-night pat of the mother, as she tucked her firstling in. It was good, after all, to be at home, and good, too, that she could be of use there. Her last thought was of the new green carpet in the sitting-room below.

“It’s an outrage on Æsthetics, that shade,” she said to herself. “I wish mother hadn’t bought it until I got home. They do need me here.”

“It’s the same old place,” said Barbara, at four o’clock the next afternoon, “the same dear, old, sleepy place. Aside from the fact that I find some more tucks let down in gowns and some more inches added to trousers each year, I don’t think Auburn changes anything—even her mind—from going-away time to coming-home time. Procrastination is the spice of life, here.”

“The things that keep a town awake are usually sent away to college,” said her mother, slyly. “But Auburn is solid, as well as conservative.”

“It’s pitifully, painfully solid,” said Barbara. “If it only realized its own deficiencies, there would be hope for it. But it is always so complacent and contented with itself. The road that leads up the hill to Dyer’s Corner is characteristic of the whole town. Some man with plenty of time on his hands—or for his feet—ambled along up the hill in the beginning of things, and for fifty years the people have followed his long, devious path, rather than branch out and originate another easier. I believe that any sign of progress, civic or intellectual, would cut Auburn to the quick,—if there is any quick to cut, in the town.”

“Haven’t you noted the fine schedule on our electric-car line?” laughed her mother.

“That’s just what I was thinking of. I commented on the improved time that the cars make to Miss Bates, this morning. To my surprise she stiffened at once. ‘You ain’t the first to make complaint,’ she said. ‘There ain’t no need of running a street-car like a fire-engine; and they say that since this new schedule has been fixed, the conductors won’t deliver dinner-pails to the factory men, or hold the car for you while you go on a short errand. Auburn ain’t going to tolerate that.’ Doesn’t that sound just like Miss Bates, and like Auburn?”

“That’s right; run down Auburn,” said Jack, tossing his strap of school-books on a chair, and hanging his cap on the rubber-plant. “You’ll make yourself good and popular if you go about expressing opinions like that in public. Auburn was good enough for Airy Fairy Lilian in high-school days, but having received four years of ‘culchaw,’ and a starter on the alphabet to add to her name, the plebeian ways of the old home-place jar her nerves. I like your loyalty, Mistress Barbara!”

“That is totally uncalled for, Jack,” said Barbara. “I like Auburn as much as you do. But it’s not an intellectual affection. I can’t help seeing, in spite of my love for it, that the town is raw and Western,—and painfully crude.”

“An intellectual affection! That’s as bad as a hygienic plum-pudding,” groaned Jack. “If I didn’t have to go out to coach the football team in five minutes, I would sit down and express my sympathy at the stultifying life which you must lead for the next sixty years. Unless, of course, we marry you off. There is always that alternative.”

“I hope you are going to be contented, dear,” said Mrs. Grafton, as her tall son relieved the rubber-plant of its burden, and clattered noisily out of the room. “I realize that after four years of the jolly intercourse you have had with the girls, and the growing college life, we must seem slow and prosaic to you here; nothing much happens when you are away. Of course, I don’t miss things as much as you will. I’m used to the old slow way, and besides, I’m too busy to have time to think of what is lacking. But I don’t want you to be hungry for what is not. The happiest thing I’ve had to think about all these four years, has been your home-coming, but I’ve been a little worried about your coming, sometimes. Do you think you are going to be contented with us?”

Barbara’s answer was judicial. “Why, yes, I think so,” she said. “Of course I shall miss the college life, and the intellectual stimulus I had there, but I’m going to work hard, too. All the theories I learned at Vassar are just ready to be put into practice, and I have so much to give the world that I can hardly wait to take my pen in hand. Oh, I am so glad, mother, that my life-work is laid out for me. I tell you frankly that I never could stand living in Auburn if I were not busy. The sordidness of the workers, and the pettiness of the idlers, would make me desperate. But I shall go to work at once, and write—write—all the things I have been longing to give utterance to for four years.”

“But you can’t write all the time,” said Mrs. Grafton.

“No, I don’t intend to. There are other things to do. There has never been any organized philanthropy in Auburn, and there is plenty of work for somebody in that line. I hope, too, that I may fall in with some congenial people who will care to do some regular, systematic study with me,—though I suppose they will be hard to find in a town of this size. Then, too, I thought that I might help Susan.”

Mrs. Grafton’s busy needle flew as she talked. “How, dear?”

“Oh, in her studies. Susan and I kept together in high-school days, and I think that it has always been a tragedy in her life that she couldn’t have a college education. She has a fine mind,—not original, you know, but clear-thinking,—and she loves study. Poor girl, I can help her so much. And of course it will be a mental stimulus to me, too.”

“I’m afraid Susan won’t have time.”

“Why, what is she doing?”

“Housework,” replied her mother. “She is cooking, and caring for her father and brothers, and she does it well, too.”

“What a shame!”

“What, to do it well?”

“You know what I mean, you wicked mother. A shame to let all that mental ability go to waste, while the pots and pans are being scoured. It doesn’t take brains to do housework.”

“Doesn’t it!” sighed Mrs. Grafton; “I find, all the time, that it takes much more than I possess. When it comes to the problems of how to let down Cecilia’s tucks without showing, how to vary the steak-chops diet that we grow so tired of, and how to decrease the gas-bills, I feel my mental inferiority. I’m glad that you have come home with new ideas; we need them, dear.”

A voice rose from the foot of the stairs below,—a shrill soprano voice, that skipped the scale from C to C, and back again to A.

“That’s Ellen,” said Mrs. Grafton, laying down her sewing with a sigh. “I can’t teach her to come to me when she wants me. She says that she doesn’t mind messages if she can ‘holler ’em,’ but she ‘won’t climb stairs fer Mrs. Roosevelt herself.’ I suppose I’ll have to go down.”

“What does she want?”

“That’s what makes it interesting: you never know. Perhaps an ironing-sheet, or the key to the fruit-closet. Maybe the plumber has come, or the milkman is to be paid, or the telephone is ringing. Or possibly a book-agent has made his appearance. She always keeps it a mystery until I get down.”

“I don’t see how on earth you live in that way. I never could get anything done.”

“I don’t accomplish much,” sighed her mother. “The days ought to be three times as long, to hold all the things they bring to be done. My life is like the mother’s bag in the ‘Swiss Family Robinson.’”

“I can’t work that way,” said Barbara. “It’s ruinous to any continuity of thought. I suppose that means that I’ll have to shut myself up in my room to write.”

Mrs. Grafton had gone downstairs.

“I don’t see how mother can stand it,” said the girl to herself. “Two telephone calls, an interview with the butcher, a stop to tie up David’s finger, a hunt for father’s lost letter, some money to be sent down to the vegetable man, and two calls to the front door,—that makes eight interruptions in the last hour. If she would only systematize things, so she wouldn’t be disturbed, she wouldn’t look so tired as she does. There ought not to be so much work in this house.”

She glanced around the big, homey-looking living-room, through the door into the narrow, old-fashioned hall, and beyond, into the sunny dining-room. The house was an old one; the furnishing, though comfortable, showed the signs of hard usage and disorder. An umbrella reposed on the couch, Jack’s football mask lay on the table, and her mother’s ravelings littered the floor. A heterogeneous collection of battered animals occupied the window-sill, and a pile of the doctor’s memoranda was thrust under the clock.

“I don’t wonder that things stray away here,” she added, “with no one to pick them up but mother. She ought to insist upon orderliness from each member of the family, and save herself. I’m afraid that her over-work is partly her own fault.”

“Another mishap,” said her mother, as she picked up her sewing on entering the room. “The gas-stove this time. Ellen can’t make it burn, and I’ve had to telephone the gas-man. Her baking is just under way, too, and I’ll have to send out for some bread for supper. I hate to ask you to do it, dear, this first day, but I’m afraid that Jack won’t be back in time to go.”

“Where shall I go? To Miss Pettibone’s?”

“Yes; my purse is on the table. Get a loaf of bread and some cookies, and anything else that would be good for supper. The meal is likely to be a slim one.”

Miss Pettibone’s tiny front room took the place of a delicatessen shop in Auburn. She was a little, brown, fat acorn of a woman, who had been wooed in her unsuspicious middle age by a graceless young vagabond, who had brightened her home for six weeks and then departed, carrying with him the little old maid’s heart, and the few thousand dollars which represented her capital. She was of the type of woman who would feel more grief than rage at such faithlessness, and she refused to allow her recreant lover to be traced. After the first shock was over, she turned to her one accomplishment as a means of livelihood, and produced for sale such delicious bread, such delectable tarts, such marvelous cakes and cookies, that all Auburn profited by the absence of the rogue. She did catering in a small way, and sometimes, as an especial favor, serving; and the sight of Miss Pettibone in a stiff white apron, with a shiny brass tray under her arm, going into a side entrance, was as sure a sign of a party within, as Japanese lanterns on the front porch, or an order for grapefruit at the grocer’s. The tragedy of her life had not embittered her, and all the grief that she had stirred into her cakes was as little noticeable in the light loaves as the evidences of sorrow in her intercourse with the world. Optimism was the yeast of her hard little life, and had raised her to the soundness and sweetness of her own bread.

There was no one in the shop as Barbara swung the door open and set a-jingle the bell at the top. But there was encouragement in the sight of a spicy gingerbread, some small yellow patty-cakes, some sugary crullers, and a pot of brown baked beans, in the glass-covered counter. Miss Pettibone came bustling into the room at the sound of the bell.

“Why, Barbara Grafton,” she said delightedly; “you, of all people! When did you get back?”

“Last night,” answered Barbara.

“Well, I declare! If I’m not glad to see you! You haven’t changed a mite,—even to get taller. I guess you’ve got your growth now. You spindled a good deal while you was stretching, but you seem to be fleshing up now.”

“I’m always a vulgarly healthy person,” said Barbara. “But how about you? How is the rheumatism?”

“It’s in its place when the roll is called. I’ve had a lame shoulder all spring.”

“I’m sorry about that.”

“Well, you don’t need to be. That’s one of the things that make dying easy. Providence was pretty kind when she began to invent aches and pains. Just think how hard it would be to step off, if you had to go when you was perfect physically. But that ain’t the usual way, thank goodness! All of the rheumatic shoulders, and bad backs, and poor sights, and failing memories, are just stones that pave the road to dying. I guess that’s what St. Paul meant when he said, ‘We die daily.’ But you don’t look as though you had begun, yet.”

“College food seems to agree with me, Miss Pettibone, but it’s not like your baking. I’ve come for a loaf of bread, and to carry off that pot of beans.”

“You can have the bread, child, but not the beans; they was sold hours ago.”

“Too bad,” sighed Barbara. “Give me the gingerbread.”

“I’m sorry, but that’s sold, too.”

“Why do you keep them, then?”

“I always ask my customers to leave them, if they ain’t in any hurry for them. It keeps my shop full, and besides, it makes folks that come in late see what they’ve missed. I notice that the minute a sold sign goes on a thing, it raises its value with most people. Barbara, it does my heart good to see you back again.”

“I’m glad to be back, too. How much are the little cakes?”

“Are you, my dear? Well, I’m glad to hear you say so. Twenty cents a dozen. Do you want them right away? You see, going away from home spoils lots of young folks, these days. Sending ’em away is like teaching them to tell time when they’re children. Of course it’s a matter of education, but after that they’re always on the outlook to see if the clock is fast or slow. And most of the young people who go away to college find it pretty slow in Auburn. I’m glad that you ain’t going to be discontented.”

Barbara looked guilty. She did not want to accept undeserved praise, and yet it was hard to be frank without being impolite.

“Of course I expect to miss college life, Miss Pettibone,” she began.

“Dear me, yes. I know what that will mean to you. Why, after I came back from Maine, twenty years ago, I was as lonesome for sea-air as though it had been a person. To this day I long for the tang of that salt wind. That’s why I use whale-oil soap—because the smell of the suds reminds me of the sea. Of course you’re going to miss college, Barbara.”

“I shall try to keep so busy that I won’t have time to be lonely,” said Barbara.

“That’s the right spirit. It won’t be hard to do, either, in your house. Your family is a large one, and your mother is put to it to do everything. Gassy ain’t old enough yet to be of much help, and it’s easier to keep a secret than a girl, in Auburn. I guess she’ll be glad to have you here to pitch in. It’s a good thing that you like housework.”

“I’m afraid I don’t know much about it. Housekeeping is not my forte. Of course I shall help mother, but I don’t intend to do that kind of work to the exclusion of all other. I intend to save the best of myself for my writing.”

Miss Pettibone looked properly awed.

“Well, it’s a wonderful thing to be able to write. I always said that you’d be an authoress, when I used to see those school compositions of yours that the ‘Conservative’ used to print. Why, Barbara, you come in here once when you was in Kindergarten school, and you set down on my front window-sill, and you says, ‘Miss Pettibone,’ you says, ‘I’ve written a pome.’ And I says, ‘Good fer you, Barbara, let’s hear it.’ So you smoothed down your white apron, and recited it to me. ‘It’s about my mother,’ you says; ‘and this is it:—

Then when you was through you explained to me that your ma didn’t really whip you. You just had to put in that part about the shoe to make it rhyme, you said. You was an awful old-fashioned child, Barbara!”

“My poetry was of about the same quality then that it is now,” laughed Barbara. “I’ll take the bread and the cakes with me, Miss Pettibone. This is like old Auburn days. I haven’t carried a loaf of bread on the street since I left home.”

“Well, paper bundles with the steam rising from them ain’t very swell, but sometimes the insides makes it worth while,” said the little baker. “Come in and see me often, Barbara, when it ain’t an errand. And give my love to your mother. She hasn’t been looking well lately, seems to me.”

Barbara smiled her good-by, and the little bell jingled merrily as the door swung shut.

“It’s always good to see Miss Pettibone,” she said to herself as she started up the quiet street. “She belongs in a story-book,—a little felt one with cheery red covers. It is queer about her, too. She is as provincial as any one in Auburn, and yet she is never commonplace.”

At the corner she encountered another of the characters of Auburn. This was Mrs. Kotferschmidt, the old German woman, whose husband had been for years the proprietor of the one boat-livery of the town. He had died during the past winter, and Barbara, meeting the widow, stopped to offer her condolences. The old boatman had taught her to swim and to row, and her expressions of sympathy were genuine.

“Mother wrote me about your loss,” she said. “I was so sorry to hear about Mr. Kotferschmidt.”

The old lady rustled in her crape, but the stolid face in the black bonnet showed no sign of emotion.

“Oh, you don’t need to mind that,” she said politely. “He was getting old, anyways. In the spring I hired me a stronger man to help me mit the boats.”

Mrs. Kotferschmidt was the only passer Barbara met on her way home. Chestnut Street was practically deserted. The school-children’s procession had passed, and the business-men’s brigade had not yet started to move. The shaded avenue, with its green arch of trees overhead, stretched its quiet, leisurely way from Miss Pettibone’s shop to the Grafton house. A shaft of red sun cut its way through the thick leaves, and covered with a glorified light the square, substantial houses that bordered the road. A few children played upon the street, a dog was taking an undisturbed siesta on the sidewalk, and three snowy pigeons were cooing softly as they strutted along the gutter. It was all pretty and peaceful, but quiet, desperately quiet. Barbara’s thoughts went back to the college campus, crowded with chattering students, leisurely professors, hurrying messenger-boys, and busy employees, and full of activity at this hour. What if the Sphinx could see her now, or the Infant, or the dear House Plant, with that plebeian loaf of bread under her arm, on that deserted Western road? She knew what they would say; she could almost feel their glances of pity. Oh, it was a misfortune to be born in a place like Auburn,—a stultifying, crude, middle-western town. She choked down a lump in her throat that threatened her.

“I must get to work,” she thought. “Soon,—soon! I shall never be able to exist in Auburn, if I give myself time to think about it.”