MAUD S. lengthened her measured tread an infinitesimally small distance, in response to the doctor’s impatient command. But she did it sorrowfully, and with the air of yielding to a child’s whim. Maud S. had been born and brought up in Auburn, and she had been educated to a stern sense of the proprieties. It was right and proper to forego appearances, and even to abandon one’s dignity, if necessary, upon a call of mercy; but a trip to the station, with a trunk aboard, and a feeble passenger inside, certainly ought to be made decently and in order. Moreover, it was the first outing that Mrs. Grafton had taken for eight years, and the occasion was one that required proper observance. To be told to “Chirk up, Maud,” right in front of Banker Willowby’s house, was certainly irritating, and her excessive good-breeding showed in the forbearance with which she received the admonition. Maud S. made up in refinement and courtesy what she lacked in speed, and she showed her delicacy, even in her resentment, by the ladylike way in which she flapped her ears forward, in order that she might not hear the domestic conversation that was going on in the carriage behind her.

“I feel like a deserter from the regiment,” sighed Mrs. Grafton. “I ought not to be going away from home.”

“Well, I’m sorry to say it,” responded the doctor, “but you certainly ought to be getting away from home just as fast as the train will carry you,—and Maud S. will condescend to take you to it. I can’t get you out of Auburn too soon.”

“It is wicked of me to leave the house and the children.”

“It would be wicked of me not to make you leave the house and the children! You have had an undisturbed diet of house and children four years too long. No wonder your heart rebels. A fine kind of doctor I am, not to have detected this long ago! If it had been any patient but my wife, I should have been quick to discover it. But it’s partly your own fault, Elizabeth; you had no business to be so uncomplaining about yourself. Even that excuse, though, doesn’t keep me from realizing how brutally thoughtless I have been.”

The mother-mind went back to the forlorn little group on the porch. “Poor children,” she sighed; “I don’t know how they are going to get along; if they only had some one to rely upon for their three meals a day! But Ellen is woefully inefficient, and she has to be handled with sugar-tongs, besides. The spring sewing isn’t finished yet; the porch ought to be screened; David—poor little pale face—ought to be sent away before his hay fever begins; and the fruit-canning season is just at hand.”

“Oh, we’ll get along,” assured the doctor, in the old, illogical way that means nothing, and yet is so comforting to a woman; “Barbara’s young and strong, and full of energy. She’ll put her hand to the helm, if need be.”

“But this is her vacation, and I want her to enjoy it. She’s worked hard at her books for four years. Besides, she is so full of her writing now—”

Dr. Grafton laughed,—a merry, contagious laugh, that rivaled his medical skill in winning his patients. “I thought as much,” he said. “Getting admission to her room nowadays is attended with all the formalities of the Masonic ritual, and she goes about with ink on her fingers and ink on her nose. I suppose she is fired by the ambition of the Banbury Cross lady in making ‘music wherever she goes.’ Poor little Barbara; she’s taking herself so very seriously, these days! She feels that she must gush forth a stream of living water for thirsty mankind, forgetting, dear little lass, that she is not a spring yet, but only a rain-barrel. Four years of college have filled her, but she doesn’t realize that now is the time to keep all the bung-holes shut. I suppose we must all pass through that think-we-are-artists disease, but Barbara seems to have an aggravated case.”

“She has been encouraged in it a good deal.”

“Yes, I know she has,—more’s the pity. A prodigy now and then must be encouraging to a college faculty, but it’s a bit hard on the prodigy herself, and harder still on the prodigy’s family. Intellectual lights ought to be hidden under a ton, instead of a bushel, so it wouldn’t be so easy to dig them out. I believe, myself, that Barbara has a fine mind, and unusual ability, but, dear heart, she’s only a child! She has to live before she can write.”

“I haven’t dared tell her that yet,” said her mother; “I don’t want even to seem to discourage her. And you know how confident Barbara is.”

“I wish she were a bit less self-confident; she’s bound to be disappointed, and I’m afraid that she sets her hopes so high that the fall, when it comes, will be a hard one. I wish, too, that she wasn’t quite so serious about it all. Her saving grace of humor seems to have utterly deserted her at this trying period of her existence.”

“That’s a way that humor sometimes has,” said Mrs. Grafton. “The very jolliest, drollest woman I ever knew confided to me once that her sense of humor had entirely deserted her, at one time. She had been out sailing with the man who afterward became her husband, and during the course of the evening he had done a little love-making. ‘He called me Sweetie,’ she said to me. ‘Think of it! Sweetie! Why, it’s as bad as Pettie, or Lambie!’ And the worst of it was that it didn’t even seem funny to me until after I thought it over at home. ‘When love comes in the door, humor flies out of the window,’ she said; and I suppose it may be the same way with genius.”

“If Barbara’s genius was armed with a broom instead of a pen, it would be better for her,” said her father. “And that is why I am glad, for her sake as well as yours, that you are going away. The girl isn’t all dreamer; she has a practical compartment in that brain of hers, and your absence will give her a chance to open the doors and windows of it, and sweep the cobwebs out. Oh, I’m not worried about Barbara,—she’ll rise to occasions. And we’ll get along beautifully. If you’ll only come back to us well and strong—”

Maud S. made an unnecessary clatter over the macadam road, in order not to hear the rest of the sentence. The anxious note in her master’s voice swallowed up the last trace of her resentment.

In the meantime the little group on the Grafton porch had turned back into the house. Jack had taken his fishing-tackle, and gone off down the dusty road without a word. David, with a plaintive expression on his thin little face, had turned to his beloved “Greek Heroes” for comfort. The Kid’s tears had been dried by Barbara’s handkerchief and two raisin cookies, and he had gone to the sand-pile to play. Gassy, alone, was unaccounted for. She had slipped away from the porch when her mother was assisted into the carriage, and was not in sight when the others turned back into the house.

“Picking up, first,” sighed Barbara, as she came back into the big living-room, which seemed unusually untidy and cheerless. “Then the bed-making and the chamber-work, planning the meals, and ordering the supplies. I think I shall write out all the menus for Ellen,—that will be the easiest way.” She was putting the room in order, and her hands flew with her thoughts. “I mean to do everything systematically. I want to prove to father that, college fits a girl for anything,—even practical life, and if I keep the house in order, discipline the children, and have some excellent meals, I think he’ll be convinced. It will take some time to get things started, but I believe that after I have them systematized, they will go smoothly, and I shall have plenty of time left for my writing. Mother always spent so much time on the unnecessary little things; no wonder she went to pieces—poor mother!”

Something dimmed Barbara’s tender eyes, but she steadied her lips and went on with her plans:—

“One thing I intend to change, and that is having dinner at noon. It’s horribly unhygienic, and old-fashioned, too. I’ll speak to Ellen about it.”

She pulled open the door of the hall-closet to find a dust-cloth. A huddled pile of pink gingham, with two long, black legs protruding, lay prone upon the floor. The head was hidden.

Barbara put an arm about the place which seemed to mark a waist in the gingham. “What’s the matter, dear?” she asked tenderly.

There was a long-drawn breath, and an unmistakable snuffle. Then Gassy’s voice answered coldly,—

“Nuthin’.”

“Well, don’t lie in here in the dark. Come out with me, little sister.”

Gassy came, slowly and reluctantly. She rose from the floor, back foremost, keeping her face assiduously turned away from her sister.

“I don’t like to see you cry—”

“Wasn’t crying,” stiffened Gassy, with a sob.

“I mean I don’t like to have you tucked away in here, when I need you outside. I want your help, little girl.”

“What for?” demanded Gassy, suspiciously.

“Oh, just to have you about, to talk to,” said Barbara. “Come on out with me, and help me plan the lunch.”

“Lunch? Are we goin’ to have a picnic?” asked Gassy, seating herself with her proud little face turned toward the window.

“No; but we’re going to have dinner at night while mother’s away. And Cecilia, how would you like to turn vegetarian?”

“Just eat vegetables?”

“Yes; it’s much more hygienic.”

“No meat at all?”

“No; we eat altogether too much flesh.”

“It would be cheaper to board at a livery stable,” said Gassy.

“And healthier, too, I think. I’ve gone without meat voluntarily for three whole years, and I have been in perfect physical condition. It’s a help mentally, too. And diet isn’t restricted if you substitute eggs and nuts and fruit for meat.”

Nuts and fruit sounded good to Gassy. “All right,” she said; “I’d like to try it. But we can’t do it yet awhile; we’re working out a bill at the butcher’s. His wife broke her collarbone last year, and he’s paying the doctor’s bill in meat. Besides, what will Ellen say?”

Barbara wondered, herself. But she was too proud to admit her foreboding.

“Ellen draws her salary” (college settlement lessons forbade her using the term “wages”) “for following our wishes—”

“Then she doesn’t earn it,” interrupted Gassy.

“And I’m sure she could find no objection to any decision of ours as to the best kind of food. Will you ask her to come here, Cecilia, as soon as she gets her dishes washed? I’ll have the menu ready for her by that time.”

Miss Parloa’s cook-book, which Barbara took down from the shelf to assist her in her task, was not a vegetarian; but memories of her self-imposed college meals still lingered. By the time Ellen’s lumbering step was heard in the back hall the menu was ready, neatly written upon the first page of a new little blank-book.

“I wuz down in the cellar,” stated Ellen, “and I can’t leave my work to come every time I’m wanted. Just holler the things down to me. Me and your ma has an understanding about that.”

“If you come in here after the dish-washing every morning, Ellen, you won’t have to make an extra trip upstairs,” said Barbara, in the approved college-settlement tone. “I have no desire to demand unnecessary service from you. I shall always have the menu for the day ready for you at this hour. This is for to-day: while mother is gone we shall have dinner at night, and luncheon at noon.”

Ellen’s expression was not wholly encouraging, as she took the little book. It read:—

“Cantyloops! What’s them?” demanded Ellen.

Barbara explained.

“Oh, mush-melons! Why didn’t you say so? Mush-melons won’t be ripe fer a month. What’s that next thing?”

“That’s a new way of serving eggs,” said Barbara; “the recipe’s in the book. It’s simple, and very pretty.”

“You can’t serve ’em that way in this town,” grumbled Ellen. “Tomatoes don’t come in cases,—they come in baskets. And as long as there’s a dish in the house where I’m working, I won’t never set a tomato-basket on the table. What’s rice payts!”

“The recipes are all in the book: I’ve marked the pages,” said Barbara, with dignity. “Of course, Ellen, if cantaloupes are not in the market, we’ll have to substitute something else. Or perhaps we could get along without that course.”

“We might have the ice, without the melons,” suggested Gassy.

Barbara glanced up suspiciously, but the sharp little face was innocent.

“That is all, then, Ellen. The recipes are given in full, and you will have no trouble in following them. I have ordered all the necessary materials. The rice and the cheese will be here in half an hour. Miss Cecilia will show you where the mint-bed is in the garden.”

Ellen’s large freckled face took on an expression of astonishment. “Who will?” she asked.

“Miss Cecilia,” responded Barbara.

Ellen’s eyes followed Barbara’s glance. “Oh, Gassy!” she said. “Didn’t know who you meant, before. Say, Barbara Grafton, I can’t never get up a meal like this, with no meat, and on ironing-day, too. Your ma never has sherbet but Sundays, and then Jack turns the crank fer me. And nuts! Nuts won’t be ripe till October.”

“The nuts are already ordered,” said Barbara, turning away. “That will do, Ellen. I’m going upstairs now to do the chamber-work, and after that I shall go to my writing. I don’t want to be disturbed. If any one comes to see me, say that I’m not at home.”

“I’ll holler if I want you,” said Ellen, grimly.

“No, don’t do that, because it breaks into what I am doing. I shall be downstairs again before luncheon-time, and you can tell me then anything you need. Cecilia, I trust you to see that I am not disturbed for two hours. Don’t call me before twelve o’clock, no matter what happens.”

It was long past noon when the last sheet of “The Spirit of the Eternal Ego” slipped from Barbara’s hand, and the pen was dropped. She glanced up at the little clock near the vine-wreathed window. “Ten minutes of one!” she exclaimed; “I must have missed the din—luncheon bell. But my essay is done—hurray!”

She hurried down the stairs. The living-room was empty and the porch deserted. The dining-room table had not been set. In the kitchen the sink was piled high with dirty dishes, dish-towels hung over every chair, and a trail of grease-spots ran from pantry to back door. The kitchen table was pulled up before a window, and about it were seated David, with some canned peaches, Gassy, with a saucer full of ground cinnamon and sugar, and Jack, with a massive sandwich of cold beefsteak and thick bread. On the table were a bowl of cold baked beans, a saucer of radishes, a dish of pickles, and a bottle of pink pop.

Barbara shuddered. “Where’s Ellen?” she asked.

Jack looked up. “Ah, the authoress!” he exclaimed. “I judge from your appearance upon the scene of action that the fire of genius has ceased to rage in unabated fury.”

“Why are you eating in here? Where’s Ellen?” Barbara repeated.

“In reply to your first question, to save carrying; in reply to your second, I canna say. I know not where she went; I only know where she deserves to go.”

“Has she gone away to stay?”

“In the language of the housewife, she has ‘left,’” said Jack. “I hurried home from the river, bringing two thirty-pound trout to grace the festal board, an hour ago. I found that if there was to be any festal board, I must supply both the festives and the boarding. The gas-stove had ceased to burn; the kitchen was still. Ellen had flown the coop. I was for calling you, but Gassy, here, was obdurate. She said that you had left orders with your private secretary that, come what might, you were not to be disturbed. Luckily, father telegraphed that he was not coming home until to-morrow. So, with the aid of my little family circle, I prepared the repast which you see before you. It was dead easy: each one took out of the ice-box his favorite article of food, and for a wonder, no two happened to want the same article. Fall to, yourself, fair lady; there is still some cold boiled cabbage in the refrigerator, and you have earned it after your valiant fight as bread-winner for the family this morning!”

“Stop your nonsense, Jack. Didn’t Ellen make any explanation of her going?”

“Like the girl in the ballad, ‘She left a note behind.’ It was written on the other side of a wonderful menu, which probably was the cause of her leaving. I don’t wonder it scared her off. The note lies there on the table.”

Barbara picked it up. The page had been torn from the blank-book, and on it was scrawled:—

“i am leving youse. my folks have been at me to come home, and i have desided not to stay where i cant holler, also i cant get no dinner like this, youse can pay my wages to the boy that comes for my close.”

Barbara sank hopelessly into a chair. There seemed nothing further to be said upon the subject of Ellen.

“Where’s Charles?” she inquired.

“Don’t you know?” said Jack. “I haven’t seen him since I came home. We thought you must have sent him on an errand, when he didn’t appear at noon. The Kid always turns up regularly at meal-time.”

“I haven’t seen him since mother left,” replied Barbara. “Then I sent him to the sand-pile. I haven’t an idea where he is.”

“You told him he couldn’t go to a picnic,” said David, dreamily.

“Why, no, I didn’t.”

“But you did, Barbara. He came and knocked on your door while you were writing, and told you he wanted to go. And you said no. Then he hollered that he thought you were”—David hesitated delicately over the epithet—“a mean old thing; that he hadn’t asked you to let him have a picnic before since mother had left. And you told him to run away,—that you were busy.”

“Did I?” asked Barbara, trying to remember. She had a faint recollection of such an interruption, but she was never sure of what happened during the hours which she spent in the throes of authorship. “How long ago was it?”

“’Bout eleven o’clock.”

Barbara looked worried. “I can’t think where he could have gone,” she said. “Have you looked everywhere in the house?”

“Everywhere we could think of,” responded Jack. “Don’t worry, Barb; he’ll show up as soon as he gets hungry. Disappearance is his long suit.”

“Does he often run away like this?”

“Every time the spirit moves him. Not even a letter-press could keep him down when the wanderlust seizes him. Sometimes he is gone for hours. Punishment doesn’t seem to do him much good, either, though I must say he never gets enough of it to make any impression. If he were mine, I should test the magic power of a willow switch.”

“How do you find him?”

“Oh, he comes wandering in, like the prodigal son, after he has fed upon husks for a while. Maybe he has been unable to face the ordeal of a separation from Ellen, and has gone with her.”

“I wish he hadn’t gone while father and mother are away. I feel, somehow, as though it were my fault.”

“Now stop worrying, Barbara; he’ll turn up. My only fear is that you’ll receive him with open arms when he arrives. Just you plan to be a little severe on him, and we’ll cure him of his habit before mother gets home.”

But in spite of Jack’s reassurance, Barbara was troubled, and as she cleared away the remains of the children’s feast, she caught herself looking out of the window, and listening for the click of the gate. At two o’clock, when the last dish was put away, the Kid had not returned; at three he was not in sight; at four none of the neighbors had seen him; at five she left the anxious seat at the front window for the kitchen, with reluctance; and at six it was a worried-looking Barbara who greeted Jack’s return from baseball practice.

“Hasn’t the little rascal turned up yet?” asked the boy. “I think I’ll go out and take a look at some of his favorite haunts. Now, Barbara, if he comes while I’m away, don’t you play prodigal with him!”

The dinner was eaten, and cleared away. At seven there was no Kid. At eight the other children went to bed without him. At nine o’clock Jack returned with no news. Even he showed anxiety as Barbara met him at the door with expectant face.

“Nobody has seen a glimpse of him,” he reported. “I’ve been the round of his intimates, and to all of his pet resorts, and I’ve scoured the town. I don’t know what else to do.”

There was a noise on the front porch. A slow, halting step came up the stairs. Barbara rushed toward the door.

“Careful, now,” cautioned Jack. “That’s the Kid, all right Don’t you greet him with outstretched arms.”

But the caution was not necessary. All of the pent-up anxiety turned into wrath as Barbara became sure of the step. Her heart hardened toward the small offender as she hastily made her plans for his reception. In response to the second knock at the door, she answered the summons.

“Who’s there?” she asked, without opening the screen.

“It’s me,” said a still, small voice.

“What do you want?”

“Want to come in.”

“Well, you can’t come in. I don’t let strange men into my house at this time of night.”

There was a pause on the front step as the little lad wearily shifted his weight from one foot to the other. Then he knocked again.

“Want to get in.”

Jack looked at Barbara, warningly. “I can’t let you in,” she said; “I’m alone in the house; my father and mother are away from home, and I never let strangers in when I’m alone.”

“I’m not strangers; I’m Charles.”

“Charles wouldn’t be out at this time of night,” remarked Barbara, impersonally.

“I’m hungry,” said the Kid.

There was a wistfulness in the voice that touched all the mother in the girl. “Well, I never turn any tramp away hungry,” she said; “I’ll give you some bread and milk, but then you’ll have to go.”

She unlocked the door, and surveyed her small brother chillingly. The Kid had evidently made a day of it. His cap was gone, his shoestrings were untied, his face and hands were streaked with dirt, and one shirt-waist sleeve was torn away.

“Goodness, how dirty!” she said. “There is a place set at the table for our own little boy, but he’s a clean child, and I can’t let you have it as you are now. You’ll have to wash, first. Go up those stairs, and you’ll find a bathroom, the first room to the left. Wash your hands and face, and then come down. I’ll give you something to eat before you go.”

The Kid looked at Barbara steadily. Wonderment, doubt, and understanding were expressed in turn on his round face. He turned without a word, his small fat legs climbed the stairway, and his dirty little figure disappeared inside the bathroom door.

His sister for the first time ventured a look at Jack.

“Bravo, Bernhardt!” he said.

“I hated to do it,” said Barbara. “But I know that he deserved it, and I feel sure that it was the right thing. A psychological punishment is so much better than a scolding or a whipping. And Charles realized what it meant; did you see his dear puzzled little face take on contrition as he began to understand my meaning? Mother says that he is a hard child to manage, but I don’t see why. He responds so readily to an appeal to his reason.”

There was a sound in the upper hall. From the bathroom door floated down the voice of the Kid:—

“Missus,” he called; “hey, Missus! There ain’t no soap in here.”