Barbara read the letter aloud to Gassy on one of the hottest of the August days. Then she drew the little sister into her arms and kissed her,—a long-drawn kiss in which was expressed relief and joy and gratitude. Gassy understood, and nestled close with a happy little croon.

“Won’t it be nice to have her back, Barbara?” she whispered. “It’s been awful lonesome without her! If it hadn’t been for you, I couldn’t have stood it.” Then, ashamed of her unwonted show of affection, she drew herself out of her sister’s lap, saying in her stiff little voice, which had been heard less frequently of late, “It’s too hot to kiss!”

“There’s another letter, too,” said Barbara; “I don’t know whether I’d better open it or not. It’s addressed to mother, but I think it is from Aunt Sarah.”

Gassy made a grimace. “Better open it, then. It won’t hold any good news.”

“I’m afraid I must; Aunt Sarah doesn’t know that mother is away from home. I hope it isn’t descriptive of any more family broils. If it is, I shan’t forward it.”

“Prob’ly she’s going to make us a visit,” said Gassy.

A horrible foreboding of what Gassy’s prediction would mean swept over Barbara. It was succeeded by a still more horrible sensation as she read the letter:—

Barbara laid down the sheet of paper, and sat looking at it with troubled eyes.

“What’s the matter?” asked Gassy.

“She’s coming, to-morrow!” groaned Barbara; “and she’s going to bring those awful grandchildren of hers. That means that one of us will have to give up a room, and sleep in the attic. And to-morrow is sweeping-day, and not a thing baked in the house, and father away, and David half-sick, and only me to do the cooking for nine people! And Mrs. Clemens can’t take us to board; father asked her before he left.”

Gassy looked equally disconsolate. “I just hate those Bossall boys,” she said; “they fight all the time, and grab the best pieces, and call you red-head, and brag about living in the city. Archie’s the biggest cry-baby I ever saw, and Nelson’s an awful liar, and that Freddy hasn’t even sense enough to keep his stockings up; they’re always in rolls about his ankles.”

Barbara listened unhearingly. “Aunt Sarah always expects to be ‘entertained.’ And she’s so particular that I just dread to have her come inside the house. During this hot weather I’ve been letting things go a little, and I know she’ll comment on the way they look. It doesn’t seem as though I could do any more work than I have been doing! What shall I do, Gassy?”

“We might go out and see the Vegetable Man’s daughter,” suggested Gassy, flattered at being taken into consultation.

“I think that’s the only thing left,” agreed Barbara; “ask Sam to harness Maud S., and I’ll put on my hat while you’re gone. You may go with me, if you want to.”

Grassy looked wistful. “I s’pose if I stayed, I could pare the potatoes for you,” she said hesitatingly.

“You dear little chicken, you,” said Barbara. “Never mind the potatoes; we can fix them together when we come back. I’d rather have you with me, now.”

Maud S. jogged slowly along the road that led to the Vegetable Man’s. It was a winding road that twisted its way uphill like a yellow shaving curl. Midsummer lay heavy on the farm-lands stretching away on either side. The corn-fields gleamed yellow in the sunshine, the locusts filled the air with their incessant drone, and goldenrod and wild asters, covered with a veil of dust, flaunted in every corner of the rail-fences. Barbara loved those rail-fences, built in the days when time was the farmer’s chief asset, and now rapidly giving way to the ugly, prosaic barbed-wire that is so symbolic of the present age of commercialism. Something of this thought she expressed to Gassy.

“It keeps the cows out of the corn, though,” was the small sister’s response.

Barbara mused over the words as she urged on Maud S. They, too, were characteristic of this Western country, the new world that was so busy at money-making that it had no time to think of beauty; the world that lived alone to keep the cows out of the corn. She loved the long, rich stretches of rolling prairie lands; she was proud of the miles of waving yellow corn-fields; at college she had felt a tender sort of thrill every time she claimed ownership with the middle West. But planted in that same prairie land, like a stalk of corn, herself, her beauty-loving soul revolted at its materialism, and pride in its productiveness seemed a sort of vulgar greed. The beautiful middle West was peopled by men with souls so dead, that to keep the cows out of the corn was their ambition in life. Live-stock and grain bounded their existence on four sides. Was it possible that people could grow so deaf to the voice of loveliness that a midsummer day could fail to speak of beauty to them? The strident clatter of a harvesting-machine seemed to assent to the question.

At the top of the hill, Maud S. stopped for a rest. And looking down from the summit, Barbara was answered. Into the hazy, blue distance stretched the corn-fields, so far away that the tasseled tops became but an indistinct, waving sea. Eyes could not see where the sea ended and the hills began; the two met, blended, melted into each other; every sign of industry was a part of the wonderful landscape, and utilitarianism became beauty itself.

At the third curl of the shaving stood the Vegetable Man’s large red barn. Back of it, and hidden from the road, stood his small white house.

“I should think his wife would rather live in the stable,” said Gassy, as the two girls went up the narrow walk with the grass growing untidily through the broken planks.

Leander Hopkins himself answered their knock at the door, and to him Barbara explained her errand.

“Wal, I dunno. She’s got steady company now, and her mind seems to be set on him. She’d like to do it fer yer ma, though, I’m sure. Ye’d best ast her.”

He led the way through an uncarpeted hall into the kitchen, where a tired-faced woman and a slatternly girl were at work. Barbara cast a quick look at the latter, and her heart sank. The Vegetable Man’s daughter was thirty-odd years old. She was thin and sallow and stupid-looking. Her eyes were crossed, and a pair of large glasses, apparently worn to hide the defect, succeeded only in making it more prominent. She listened to Barbara’s recital with little show of interest.

“I dunno,” she said finally, “as there’s any need I should work out.”

Again Barbara offered inducements.

“Do you let your girls have company?” asked the Vegetable Man’s daughter, with a simper.

“Oh, yes, certainly,” answered Barbara.

“Steady company, I mean,” said the girl.

“If they prefer that kind,” said Barbara, smiling in spite of herself.

“And all their evenings?”

“Yes,” replied Barbara.

“And Sunday afternoons to supper?”

Barbara hesitated. “Yes,” she agreed, finally.

“Well, I dunno,” said the girl. The tired-faced woman put in a word:—

“You might go and help her out a bit, Libbie. Then you could buy those white shoes you’ve been wanting.”

“Well, maybe,” assented the girl. “When do you want me?”

“Right now,” said Barbara.

Ten minutes later, Mr. Hopkins accompanied the three girls to the gate, lending his presence while Barbara untied the horse and cramped the buggy. “Good-by, Libbie,” he said; “write us frequent, and don’t work too hard. Give my regards to yer pa, Miss Barb’ry. I ain’t never forgot the time he pulled me out of noomonia. There ain’t nothing too big fer me to do fer him; tell him to come out some time, and pick gooseberries.”

Great-Aunt Sarah reached Auburn the next day. No telegram had heralded the hour of her coming, and consequently there was no one at the station to meet her on arrival. At noon on Friday, while Barbara was convincing the Vegetable Man’s daughter that steak should be broiled instead of fried, a carriage rolled up to the door. Peanuts Barker, still in Banker Willowby’s top hat, deposited a trunk on the front walk, and a stout lady, with two methodical puffs of shiny black hair in under her bonnet, and three small boys dismounted.

At the sound of the wheels there was a general scattering of the clan. Gassy, whose hatred for Aunt Sarah was general, and for the boys specific, retired to the coal-cellar, David hurried to put his dear books out of reach of marauding hands, and Jack meanly abandoned the scene of action for an upstairs window. Barbara and the Kid were the only members of the family to greet the guests.

“How do you do, my dears?” said Aunt Sarah, majestically. “I was surprised to find no one at the station when I arrived. I am not accustomed to the care of my own baggage. Barbara, how sallow you are! Don’t set my trunk down there, sir; my fee to you includes payment for carrying it upstairs. Archie, let the dressing-case alone; I don’t want to have to speak to you about it again! I suppose I am to have the east room, as usual. I hope the morning light won’t wake me up at day-break.”

“The same old Great Sahara!” whispered Jack, appearing in the hall to shoulder the luggage. “Age cannot wither, or custom stale her infinite arrive-ity. If I should hear that voice in the heart of the Hartz Mountains, I should say, ’Tis she! ’Tis she!”

It was true that the three years that had passed since aunt and niece had met had done little to change Aunt Sarah. At the table that noon, Barbara, who had sacrificed her vegetarian theories to the comfort of her visitors, hospitably inquired about the result:—

“How is your steak, Aunt Sarah?”

Mrs. Bossall plied her knife vigorously for a moment, then replied to her niece’s question with a single word:—

“Tough!”

Barbara’s housekeeping, Jack’s idleness, Gassy’s disposition, David’s dreaminess, and the Kid’s table-manners were all criticised with impartiality. Even the Vegetable Man’s daughter was not spared.

“If that girl were working for me, she wouldn’t sit up with her young man until half-past ten o’clock,” she announced, on the second morning after her arrival.

She commented on the hardness of her bed, the crack in her window, the quality of her food; Barbara’s theories, the doctor’s weakness for charity cases, the lack of economy in the household, and the extravagance of sanitarium life, all came in for her condemnation. Barbara’s temper was held by a single airy thread, that threatened daily to snap, and was kept in place only by exertion of much will-power, and the comforting thought that Aunt Sarah’s visit could not last forever.

“Edward’s children” had inherited some of the most striking of their grandmother’s characteristics. Moreover, added to her aggressiveness and her domineering qualities, they possessed a fertility of resource and an ingenuity for mischief that filled the Kid with envy, Barbara with horror, and Jack with amusement.

“They have imbibed some of their beloved grandmother’s theories,” said Jack to Barbara, on the third day of the visit. “Talk about the ‘New Thought’! Those kids have more new and original thoughts in ten seconds than her whole sect has in ten years. What idea do you suppose they conceived this morning? I came up the back walk in time to see a bundle of white linen dangling in the air at the barn window. Those little fiends were up in the loft working the hay pulley, and hanging from the rope below was the youngest Wemott baby, the hook of the rope caught through the band of its little apron. There was only a button between that infant and eternity when I rescued it.”

“They are the worst children I ever saw,” said Barbara. “Cecilia is hard to manage, but she is as nothing compared with the Bossall boys. You can’t appeal to their better natures, for there is nothing there to appeal to. And as for punishing them, I don’t believe that they are afraid of anything in this whole world.”

“Except Gassy,” suggested Jack.

“Yes, they seem to hold her in wholesome respect I can’t understand the cause of their consideration for her, unless it is fear. Cecilia isn’t mighty in the flesh, but her tongue is a power.”

The reason for this respect came to light the next day. It was fear: but fear of something besides Gassy’s tongue. Before daylight, Aunt Sarah creaked her way up the attic stairs to the little, hot room in which Barbara had slept since the arrival of the guests. Aunt Sarah was addicted to black silk nightgowns, and the long, dark robe, a lighted candle, and curling-pins, rolled so tightly that they lifted her eyebrows, gave her a decidedly Lady Macbethian appearance.

“Are you awake, Barbara?” she inquired, in an angry stage whisper.

By that time Barbara could truthfully answer that she was. “What is it?” she asked.

“I’m sorry to disturb you,” said Aunt Sarah, in a voice that betokened anything but regret. “But I am in such a state of mind that even New Thought fails to calm me. I was never so insulted in my life as by the treatment that has been accorded me and mine while in my own niece’s home.”

“What do you mean, Aunt Sarah?” cried Barbara, now thoroughly aroused.

“I mean just this: Cecilia has been according Edward’s children a system of torture that has nearly robbed them of their sanity.”

Even in her worry and bewilderment, a wicked thought, reflecting upon the present mental condition of Edward’s children flashed through Barbara’s mind. But she checked the desire to give utterance to it.

Aunt Sarah set down the candle, and faced Barbara severely. “I was aroused from sleep a few moments ago by a noise in the next room,” she said. “It sounded like a scream from Archie, and I sat up in bed and listened. I heard a deep voice in the children’s room, saying, ‘I am the Holy Ghost,’ and other irreverent things which I cannot, at this moment, recall. I knew that no burglar would stop for that announcement, so I quietly opened the door and looked in. A figure in a sheet was standing between the two beds, with arms outstretched over the two boys.”

“What!” exclaimed Barbara.

“It was Cecilia, of course,” continued Aunt Sarah. “The dear little lads were speechless with fright and horror, and that bad child was claiming to be the Holy Ghost, and threatening all sorts of terrible things to them if they tore David’s books again. I sent her back to bed at once, and tried to reassure the boys, but they were in a sad state of terror. They tell me that this has gone on from night to night. They know, of course, that it is Cecilia, but they are timid by nature, and they have been in a pitiable frame of mind. I have noticed, ever since our arrival, that they have been slightly unmanageable, and this explains it all; New Thought cannot work against a supernatural fear. Now, the question is, what are you going to do with Gassy?”

Wicked Barbara suppressed a chuckle as she debated. “Well, I think I’ll let her sleep till morning, Aunt Sarah,” she said aloud, soberly. “Then I’ll see what I can do with her. It was very wrong of her, of course, and I’m sorry that you and the boys have been put to so much distress. It isn’t like Cecilia to be cruel.”

“It is exactly what I should expect of her,” was the sharp reply. “Cecilia I like the least of any of my niece’s children. She is naturally an inhuman sort of child, without the slightest trace of affection for any one; and then she has always been allowed to have her own way, until she is most unmanageable. Elizabeth and your father have spoiled all of their children, but the result is most obvious in Cecilia. She ought to be severely dealt with for a trick of this kind. Reverence, if not simple humanity, should have deterred her. But none of you children seem to have any reverence for anything. I think I shall speak to Cecilia, myself, this morning.”

“Oh, please don’t, Aunt Sarah,” exclaimed Barbara, impulsively. “You know how sensitive Cecilia is, and how hard to handle! I think that if I talk to her first, I can make her sorry for frightening the boys. But she doesn’t li—”

Aunt Sarah took up her candle with as much dignity as it is possible to assume in curling-pins. “I understand that Cecilia doesn’t like me,” she said stiffly, “and I assure you that the feeling is mutual. I shall not speak to her, of course, if you prefer that I shall hold no communication with her. But I shall write your mother a full account of the whole affair as soon as I leave, which will be this morning, if possible. I must say, Barbara, that I never expected that you would condone wrongdoing, even in your own household. I shall telephone for an expressman to take my trunk to the station at ten this morning. If there was ever a home and a family where New Thought is needed, this is the one!”

Aunt Sarah was as good as her word. During the entire breakfast hour, she deigned not so much as a glance at her guilty great-niece. Upon her departure, she ostentatiously kissed every other member of the family, including Jack, who presented a cheek gingerly for the salute. Barbara accompanied her to the station, but she was not to be mollified, and the farewell was enlivened only by Edward’s boys, whose parting act was to open a coop of chickens in the Auburn baggage-room, and give the fowls their freedom. Barbara, as well as the station-master, heaved a sigh of relief as her relatives boarded the train.

Upon her return to the disorderly home, the big sister sought out the little one. It was hard to find fault with the punishment that had been meted out to Edward’s boys, but it must be done. Barbara took the small girl on her lap. “Why did you do it, Chicken?” she asked.

Gassy’s lips set in a decided line. “Because they deserved it,” she said. “I ain’t one bit sorry, Barbara Grafton, not one single bit! Those are the meanest, sneakiest boys that ever lived! They didn’t dare torment Jack,—he was too big; they were afraid of me because I could beat them running. So they took it all out on David and the Kid, ’specially David. He ain’t strong enough to fight, and, besides, he’s too gentle; and they knew it, and took advantage of it all the time. First they used to hit him, and tease him, but he’d never answer back,—just look at them kind of sad and slow, like Mary, Queen of Scots, on the scaffold. And that spoiled all their fun; the scratch-back kind are the only ones who are ever really teased, you know.”

Barbara put this bit of philosophy away for future reference.

“But after awhile,” the child continued, “they found out that it hurt him lots worse to meddle with his books, so they did that, just to worry him. You know how he loves that King Arthur book of his! Yesterday they cut out every single picture in it with their jackknives,—just hacked it all up! You can’t hurt those boys,—they’re too tough; but they’re awful ’fraid-cats, and you can scare ’em easy. So I just put on a sheet, and went in and warned ’em that they dasn’t touch David’s books again. He cries every time they do, and that makes his hay fever worse.”

“But, dear,” Barbara said quietly, “it wasn’t nice to do it. They were in your own house, you know—”

“We didn’t invite them,” interrupted Gassy.

“And, besides, you must never scare people. It’s a very dangerous thing to do. If they had been frightened into brain fever, you would never forgive yourself. And one thing more, dear, I don’t like your calling yourself the Holy Ghost.”

“That was because my sheet was torn. The hole-y ghost, you know.”

“I know, but it isn’t a reverent thing to say.”

“But, Barbara, it doesn’t seem wicked to me to say that. I never could even imagine the Holy Ghost. It just seems like words, and nothing else. Every time I go to church they talk about the Holy Ghost, and the Spirit, and the Life Infinite, and I can’t understand ’em. Even Jehovah sounds awful big and far off. But when they say Jesus,—Baby Jesus, I mean, or Little Boy Jesus, or Man Jesus,—that is easy and sweet. I always like best to think of Him that way; not like a God, so far off, and with so many things to manage, that it’s hard to believe that He cares, but like a man, that made mistakes, and had to try over again.”

“Yes,” said Barbara, understandingly.

“I like to think,” went on Gassy, “that He did just the same things that we do, and loved the same things, and wanted the same things. It wouldn’t help me any to have Him be glad to die and go up in a chariot of fire, with people hollering, like Elijah did. But it does help me to know that He wanted to live, just like I do, and cried about leaving everything, at first, and then was big and brave enough to stand it. You know I wouldn’t be irreverent about Him, Barbara!”

“No, and it would hurt you to have any one else irreverent about Him. And that is why I don’t like to have you say what you did about the Holy Ghost; you may hurt some one else.”

“Well, I won’t do it again; that is, I won’t be irreverent,” promised Gassy. “But about scaring them, Barbara Grafton, you mustn’t try to make me be sorry about that, for I’d be telling a lie if I said I was. They deserved it, and there wasn’t any other way of making them let David alone. I’m glad I frightened some of the bad out of them.”

And with this Barbara was forced to be satisfied.

The path was straightened for Barbara after the departure of her guests. The Vegetable Man’s daughter was incompetent, but she was good-natured and cheerful. Her shrill soprano voice rose at all hours of the day in the request to be waltzed around again, Willie, around, and around, and around. Her “Steady Company” made regular calls at the kitchen every evening that he was off his run, and sat on the back porch, with his feet on the railing and his pipe in his mouth, scarcely uttering a word during the call. The Vegetable Man’s daughter proved to be a fluent conversationalist, and judging from the scraps of sound that floated around to the front porch, now and then, the evening visits seemed to consist of monologue, sandwiched in between a kiss of greeting and one of parting. Promptly at half-past ten the Steady Company would withdraw, and the Vegetable Man’s daughter would renew her request to be waltzed around again, Willie, all the way up the back stairs.

Perhaps it was the thought of her absent lover that prevented her success as a cook, for it was certain that the day after one of his calls the bread was apt to be unsalted, the napkins forgotten, and the milk left to sour. But she was strong and willing, patient with Barbara’s theories, and fond of the children. Something of the old-time comfort returned to the house, and Barbara found time to mingle with the young people of Auburn, and to enjoy the first youthful companionship she had had since her return from college. On some of these occasions she met Susan, who greeted her with a stiff smile, in which wistfulness was scarcely hidden. There was nothing of regret in Barbara’s cool nod. Susan was not as necessary to her as she was to Susan, and in the popularity which came to her as readily with the young people at home as at school, she easily forgot the quiet girl on the outskirts of the jolly crowd.

Gayeties began to thicken upon the approach of school-days, and Barbara took active part in all of them. In the relief about her mother’s condition, all serious thoughts took wing, and Barbara played the butterfly with light heart. “The Infinite of the Ego” lay untouched in a pigeon-hole of her desk, and she felt no inclination to write anything heavier than the semi-weekly letters that merrily told the life at home to her mother. The taste of play-time was very sweet after the hard summer; and tennis and boating and driving filled the days of early autumn to the brim.

But the recess was of short duration. Barbara, coming in from an afternoon tea, was met in the hall by the Vegetable Man’s daughter. “I’ve something to tell you, Miss Barbara,” she said.

“What is it, Libbie? Are we out of eggs? I remembered, after I had gone, that I had forgotten to order more.”

“No’m, it ain’t eggs; it’s me. We eloped this afternoon.”

“What!”

“Yes’m; me and my Steady Company. He got off his run this afternoon, and we thought we might as well do it now and be done with it.”

“So you’re married?”

“Yes’m; we went to the justice’s office. They said it was the prettiest wedding that had been there in a month. I wore my white shoes, and I flush up so when I get excited.”

“But how did you elope? Didn’t your family ever know that you were going to be married?”

“Oh, yes, they knew that for two months already, but we didn’t say nothing to them about this. We wanted a piece in the paper about it, and they always write it up when a couple elope. So we told the justice we was running away, and we wanted it wrote up, and he said he’d see to it. Besides, we didn’t have time to let ’em know, out home; we just decided it ourselves this afternoon.”

“Well, I hope you’ll be happy, Libbie,” Barbara recovered herself enough to say. “I suppose this means that I shall lose you?”

“Yes’m. I’m just back for my clothes. We’re going out to his mother’s to-night. She’s got the harvesters at her house this week, and will want me to come out and help her cook for them. After that, we’re going to housekeeping in town.”

“Aren’t you going to have any wedding-trip?”

“We had it already. We took the trolley-car out to the cemetery after the wedding, and set there two good hours, till it was time to come in and get supper. I knew you wouldn’t get home in time. I’m sorry to leave you this way, without warning, Miss Barbara, but it can’t be helped. That’s what an elopement is.”

Barbara’s pretty reception gown was laid aside for a shirt-waist and skirt and a kitchen apron. And as she and Gassy “cleared up” the dishes, the Vegetable Man’s daughter and her Steady Company passed away in a cloud of romance and tobacco smoke.