THE alarm-clock under Barbara’s pillow sent forth a muffled rattle, like a querulous old woman with tooth-ache, complaining from beneath her bandages. The girl turned over in bed and sighed. A moment later the town-clock struck six, with insistent note, and after a sympathetic delay of a minute more, the living-room clock below sounded its admonition. Sleepily and reluctantly Barbara drew forth the alarm-clock to make sure of the worst.

“It’s always six o’clock,” she said crossly. Then she slammed the offender down upon the bed, and set her bare feet upon the floor with a thud that betokened no happy morning spirit. Oh, for those luxurious days at college when a closed transom and an “engaged” sign upon the door insured sufficient slumber after a night of school-girl dissipation! Not since the nightmare of housekeeping had attacked her rest, two months before, had “Babbie the Nap-kin,” as she was jocularly known at college, had enough sleep. This starting the day with heavy eyes, and body that sighed for rest, was a new thing. How had her mother done it, all these years? Probably as she, Barbara, was doing it now;—there was no one else to share it with her.

The same old routine,—Barbara wearily went over it: Unlock the doors, open the windows; light the fire, put the kettle on, take the food out of the ice-box, skim the milk, grind the coffee, make the toast, set the table, rouse the sleepers. Every one of the mornings in the year her mother had done it, or superintended the doing of it. Three hundred and sixty-five mornings, for twenty-three years. 8395 times! Barbara shuddered.

It was hot and stuffy downstairs. The chairs were set about at untidy angles, and the sun blazed in fiercely at the window. The kitchen door-knob was sticky to the touch, and a bold cockroach ran across the back porch as she opened the door. Was this summer hotter and more disagreeable than usual, or was it possible that Mrs. Grafton had been responsible for the cool, shaded rooms and the fresh morning air that had always greeted Barbara when she arrived upon the scene of action? For the third time in her experience the girl considered herself with misgiving. Was it possible that housekeeping was a science, instead of merely an occupation,—to be learned by study, and experiment, and experience, just like philosophy? Was it even possible that she, Barbara Grafton, called “The Shark” at college, was, for the first time in her life, to fail miserably in a “course”?

Dr. Grafton and David were the only members of the family who responded to the breakfast-bell. The doctor drank his under-done coffee and ate his over-done toast without comment; the small boy bent contentedly over a bowl of bread and milk. Barbara herself ate nothing.

“What’s the matter, girl?” asked her father. “Aren’t you well?”

“I’m all right, only not hungry.”

“I’m afraid you’re working too hard. I can’t have you losing your appetite and looking like a ghost. Don’t you hear of a cook?”

Barbara shook her head.

“I’m afraid we’ll have to make other sort of arrangement, then. Perhaps Mrs. Clemens will take us all to board until we hear of some help. I’ll try to see her to-day. I don’t mind the meals,—my stomach is proof against anything!—but I can’t have you sick.”

Her father laid a tender hand on her shoulder, and gave her a playful little pat as he left the room. But Barbara felt anything but playful. Her eyes flashed, and her lips set in a hard, bitter line. “My stomach is proof against anything!” Such a stupid joke,—such a cruel bit of pleasantry! There were unshed tears in her voice, as well as her eyes, as she went to the stairway and called up, crossly: “Jack, Cecil—ia!”

There was no answer. Repeated calls brought forth an angry response from Gassy, and a lazy one from Jack.

“Breakfast is all over. If you’re not down in five minutes, there’ll be nothing for you; I’m not going to let my dishes stand all morning!”

Gassy deigned no answer. Dangerously near the time-limit, Jack appeared.

“The wind seems to be from the east this morning,” he remarked casually.

Barbara did not answer.

“Was there anything special requiring my attendance at this witching hour of the morn?”

“The lawn-mower,” said his sister, sharply.

“Ah, I thought it must be a telegram or a fire,—judging from your agonized voice.”

“If it had been a fire, you would have had to be roused! When you haven’t an earthly thing to do about the house, Jack, I do think that you might get up in time for breakfast.”

“You have some new theories since you began housekeeping. I have some faint recollections about your being the last man in the house to rise, a few weeks ago. I’m sorry, though, I overslept, Barb. I got up the minute you called.

Excuse me for turning up my trousers. The coffee seems to be somewhat muddy.”

The storm that had been threatening all the morning came at last. College dignity was forgotten, and Barbara became a cross, over-worked, over-heated child, with a strong sense of grievance.

“Jack Grafton, you are a lazy, selfish, inconsiderate beast! If you had to do anything but eat the meals, you wouldn’t criticise them so sharply. You know I’m doing the best I can,—you know it!—and it’s so hot, and there’s so much work—”

David’s serious brown eyes looked reproach at his older brother.

“I’m sorry, Barb,” said Jack, penitently. “I exaggerated about the coffee,—it’s not muddy, only riley. You mustn’t get so fussed up about things that are said in fun. You always used to be able to take a joke. As for the grass, I’ll hie me hence at once. It needs a cutting as badly as Gassy’s hair.”

In spite of herself, Barbara smiled at the comparison. “Poor Cecilia,” she sighed. “I don’t know what on earth to do with that hair of hers. It is so stiff and rebellious that it won’t lie smooth, and yet so thin and straight that it won’t fluff out, like other children’s. I want her to have it cut, but she objects, and pins her faith to that row of curl-papers that makes her look like a Circassian Lady. It is such an ugly shade of red, too. If the child only knew how she looked—”

“She’d never have another happy moment,” interrupted Jack, pushing back his coffee-cup. “Well, to work, to work! My, it looks hot out there in the sunshine!”

An hour later, Barbara raised a flushed face from the ironing-board to greet the Vegetable Man. The Vegetable Man was fat and red, and wheezed as he walked. He was an old patient of the doctor’s, and his bi-weekly trips to the Grafton house were partially of a social nature. His face wore the blank expression of a sheet of sticky fly-paper, and he was equally hard to get rid of. He sat down on one of the kitchen chairs and fanned himself with his hat.

“This is a scorcher!” he remarked.

No one appreciated the truth of this statement more strongly than Barbara. But she feared the result of an enthusiastic response to the Vegetable Man. “Yes,” she assented. “It is.”

“Ninety-three, accordin’ to the official thermometer on the weather bureau’s porch. My thermometer’s three degrees higher, an’ when I’m out in the sun, I believe mine’s right. Even the guv’ment’s likely to make mistakes on a day like this.”

Barbara nodded.

“Want any vegetables this morning?”

“No, I have already ordered my meals to-day.”

“Got some nice corn out there in my wagon. An’ some prime cauliflower.”

“I don’t want either, to-day.”

“All right; only you know you save money by buyin’ from me instead of the grocery-store. Your ma would tell you that, if she wuz here. How is your ma?”

“Getting better, slowly.”

“That’s good; give her my respects when you write. Leander Hopkins’s respects, an’ hopes you will soon be in your accustomed health again. How are you gettin’ on while she’s gone? Are you just helpin’ in the kitchen, or are you without?”

“Without?”

“Yes, without.”

“I don’t understand what you mean, Mr. Hopkins.”

“Why, without a gurrl—a kitchen gurrl.”

“We have no cook at present. Do you know where I can get one?”

“No, I can’t say as I do. Gurrls are pretty scarce in kitchens, nowadays, though there seems to be plenty of them in parlors. Maybe my Libbie would come in and help you out, though she ain’t never worked out, regular.”

“Oh, would she?” exclaimed Barbara.

“Can’t say fer sure. I’ll ast her when I go home. She’s got steady company, now,—he’s a brakeman on the Southern Limited,—an’ he always gits back fer Sunday night. I dunno as she’d like to engage herself fer Sunday nights. But I’ll ast her. You ain’t got that waist sprinkled enough; it’s too dry to iron well.”

Barbara only thumped her iron a little harder.

“Don’t like to be told, do ye? Guess you must be a little like my wife,—set in your ways. I know a good deal about ironin’; seen the women-folks do it fer thirty years.”

“You must have had a good deal of time to sit and watch.”

“Wal, no, not so much as you might think; they’s a good deal of work on my place. I’ve been sickly, though, a good bit of my life, an’ had to sit by an’ let others do it. I know, Miss Barb’ry, that I’ve got the reputation of bein’ lazy, but it ain’t true: I ain’t lazy; I don’t mind workin’, but I don’t like to have to work. That’s what I like about vegetablin’: I can rest a little as I go along.”

“You are fortunate!”

There was a pause as the stubborn iron squeaked its way over the half-dry linen.

“Wal, I guess I must be goin’. You wouldn’t like no egg-plant, would ye?”

“No, I think not.”

“Shell I bring in a little pie-plant before I go? Ye might change your mind if you was to see it.”

“No, I won’t trouble you.”

“No trouble at all, even if it is a hot day. You’re sure you don’t want it?”

“Yes, I’m sure.”

“Wal, good-day, then. Don’t fergit my respects to your ma.”

Out of the kitchen door waddled Mr. Hopkins. In at the same door he waddled a few seconds later. “Hate to int’rupt ye, Miss Barb’ry,” he said mysteriously, “but jest look a’ here.”

“What is it?” inquired Barbara, suspiciously, fearing she was being enticed to the vegetable wagon.

“That’s what I don’t know,” said Mr. Hopkins.

The Vegetable Man led the way around the walk at the side of the house. He stopped at the turn, where the syringa and the lilac mingled their branches in a leafy roof. The sun and the leaves made a checkerboard of light and shade below, and here in the dancing flecks of sunshine lay a grotesque little figure, asleep. It was Gassy, but such a sadly changed Gassy! Reckless hands and a pair of scissors had worked havoc with the hair that had been “too stiff to lie smooth, and too thin to fluff.” Except for the crown of the head, where a few locks stood erect, like faithful sentinels on a battle-swept field, the scalp was almost as bare as a billiard ball. Not content with devastating her enemy, Gassy had concealed the last sign of the hated color by covering the remains with a coating of black. Perspiration and tears had aided its extension, and two streaks of the dark fluid had found their way down her cheeks. There were traces of recent crying about the closed eyes, and a damp handkerchief was tightly clutched in one of the thin little hands.

Barbara dismissed the Vegetable Man with a few whispered words of explanation, walking with him to the gate to insure his departure. Then she returned to the syringa-bush, and took the shorn little head in her lap. Gassy started, and sat erect. For a moment she looked bewildered; then she remembered, and her proud little voice said defiantly:—

“I guess I won’t look like a Circassian Lady, now!”

Barbara hesitated; words seemed so futile, and any explanation was impossible. Then she did the very best thing, under the circumstances,—caught the small sister in her arms, and held her close. Gassy struggled for a second, then her thin little body relaxed, and the hot tears drenched Barbara’s shoulder.

“You needn’t think I didn’t know about my hair, before!” she said fiercely, between sobs. “I’ve always hated it, long before I heard what you and Jack said. But I’ve got it fixed now. It ain’t stiff, or thin, or red, any more!”

Barbara waited until the first shower was over. “How did you do it, dear?” she asked, at last.

“Manicure scissors and liquid blacking,” said Gassy, with a fresh storm of sobs. “I don’t care if I do look awful! I looked just as bad before. Jack said I’d never have another happy moment if I knew how I looked. And I do. I’m the ugliest girl in Auburn,—the very homeliest!”

Barbara’s quick thoughts flew to the sanitarium at Chariton. Was it possible that tragedies like this were of common occurrence in her mother’s life? It was only a child’s tragedy, but it was a very real one; and the tenderest wisdom and the wisest tenderness were needed to dispel it. Her mind went back to the sweet lips and the loving arms that had soothed so many of her own baby griefs. Housekeeping had been such a small part of her mother’s life; was she, Barbara, capable of being a substitute in a case like this?

“I’m sorry you heard what we said,” she replied, tenderly stroking the sticky head. “Of course you know that we always exaggerate when we joke,—Jack and I,—and we said what we did in fun. Your hair isn’t as pretty now as it will be when you get a little older; then it will turn dark,—red hair always does,—and you may have real auburn, which is the prettiest shade in the world.”

“It isn’t just my hair,—it’s all of me,” sobbed Gassy. “I’m so dang homely!”

Barbara laughed, a merry, hearty laugh, that carried more comfort than a million words to the aching little heart. “You blessed chicken! You’re not so homely.”

“But I want to be pretty like you; not skinny, and awkward, and tight little pig-tails of hair! I’d just love to shake curls out of my neck, the way the other girls do.”

“Well, not everybody can have curly hair; I’m not that lucky, either. But I was thinner than you when I was your age, and far more awkward. You’ll grow fatter in a year or two. And in the meantime, dear, be glad of the pretty things about yourself,—your clear, wide-open eyes, your dainty little ears, your high-arched instep. You have a very sweet mouth, too, when you are happy.”

Gassy snuggled a shade closer to her sister. “I like you, Barbara,” she said, her proud little voice strangely softened.

“I know you do, dear. And I love you, so much that I want you to like yourself. Don’t think about how you look; you’re always pretty when you’re merry. Let’s go in and shampoo that head of yours. You won’t mind it short during this hot weather, and it will probably grow in thicker and darker because of this cutting.”

The half-ironed waist had dried when they returned to the house, and Barbara, as she re-sprinkled the garment and laid it back in the ironing basket, was reminded of her frequent admonitions to her mother about “systematizing the housework.” “A mother is a composite of cook, laundress, seamstress, waitress, nurse, and kindergartner,” she said to herself. “And yet that isn’t what keeps her busiest; it’s the unforeseen happenings, and the interruptions, that eat up the time. I don’t wonder she never finished her work. What next, I’d like to know?”

Her wish was soon gratified by the appearance of Jack at the door. “Gee whiz! but this day is a scorcher,” said the boy, mopping his forehead with his handkerchief, as he threw himself upon the lounge in the next room. “It is ninety in the shade in the yard,—that is, it would be if there was any shade to get under. If I ever said anything derogatory unto the snow-shovel, I take it all back. Here’s a letter, Barb; mail-man left it.”

Barbara, reaching for the envelope, stumbled over the prostrate form of David, who lay on his stomach on the floor, reading his well-worn copy of the “Greek Heroes.”

“Goodness, David, do get out of the way! There isn’t room to step in this house when you lie on the floor. And please don’t read aloud until I finish this letter.” She tore open the envelope, and her eyes eagerly ran over the words, as her mind hungrily took them up:—

Jack, glancing up from the lounge, caught a glimpse of Barbara’s face, “What’s the matter? Is mother worse?” he demanded, sitting bolt upright on the sofa.

“No,—oh, no. It’s just a letter from college,” said Barbara. She got up from her chair suddenly, and made her way back to the kitchen.

“If you’re through with it, may I read aloud now?” called David; but his sister did not hear him. She stepped inside the pantry and sat down on a tin cracker-box to think it over.

The Eastman Scholarship! The highest honor which Vassar had to offer, and which carried with it a year of post-graduate study, had been the ambition of Barbara’s life. Nobody but herself could dream what that letter meant to her. Nobody but herself ever suspected how bitter the disappointment had been the spring before, when Miss Culver, who was less brilliant, but more of a student than Barbara, had taken the scholarship almost out of her hands. Every one in college had expected her to win it, and though she had been outwardly dubious about her prospects, she had been inwardly self-confident. It had taken courage to offer congratulations to Miss Culver, on that dreadful day when the decision had been announced. Everybody—that is, everybody but the faculty—knew that it belonged, by right, to her. She had made light of her defeat at home,—she had never dared think much about it, herself,—and nobody had suspected how deep a tragedy it was.

And now the chance had come, now, when everything in the world was upside down; when a sick mother and a forlorn household needed her; when an empty kitchen called her; and when a pair of hands, awkward though they were, meant as much to her family as a brilliant brain meant to her college. Barbara closed her eyes, and tried to think.

David, in the next room, had taken up his reading again, at the Isle of the Sirens:—

“I’ve been asleep,” thought Barbara, bitterly, “asleep and dreaming.”

“Every dream I had at college—every hope, every aspiration—has gone,” interrupted Barbara’s thoughts. “Surely I left school with plenty of ambition. But here I am, a drudge of a housekeeper, and a poor one at that! I can’t even cook a meal or iron a waist. And I haven’t the chance to do anything else, with mother sick. Oh, I would like to! I would, I would! Because this is my last opportunity. If I don’t take this, I shall never, never, see the land of Hellas more.”

David lost his place in the story. But the new page he turned was just as sweet to him, and he went on reading in his child’s voice, made hoarse by hay fever, and yet sweet with love of the words:—

It was nine o’clock that evening before the last dish was washed, David’s throat-wash prepared, Gassy’s head anointed, and a letter written. After these things were done, Barbara went out to the mail-box. She posted her letter, and came back through the moonlight that seemed to heat the breathless night. Mosquitoes hummed about the porch, a cricket creaked in the grass, and the voices of innumerable locusts nicked the silence of the evening. The house was dark and lonely, and still. Barbara sank down on the porch, wearily, and laid her head against the railing.

“I’ve cast in my star,” she said to herself.

The homely words of the Vegetable Man came back to her with new meaning.

“Yes, it’s true, I am without,” she added; “that’s just the word for it!”

She put both hands before her eyes, and burst into tears.