You just think of it that way and one of these days you’ll meet the right man.”

Grace seemed a little impatient. “Oh, Mother, I don’t know that I want to.”

“Want to what, Grace?”

“Ever marry.”

“Oh, yes, you do. Just now after this little affair you don’t think so. But you will, Grace, you just wait.”

In 1909 Grace graduated from the University with Phi Beta Kappa honors, secured a good high school position farther out in the state, and was not home until the annual Christmas reunion. When she came home she seemed to have developed a maternal attitude toward her mother which was paradoxically pleasing and irritating to Abbie. She was pleased that Grace was thoughtful and considerate of her, irritated that she began to think of her as old.

“Mother, you ought to take a nap every afternoon,” Grace would say didactically. To which Abbie would retort, “I’m not exactly feeble yet, Grace.” Or, “Mother, there’s a splendid new book on avoiding old age. You ought to read it.”

“I’m only sixty-two, Grace, and I don’t see any signs of senility. You can’t avoid old age, but you don’t need to think about it.”

A week after she came home at the close of her spring term, Grace went away to summer school. There was not a lazy bone in Grace’s body, Abbie often said. She was energetic, efficient. Sometimes, watching her or thinking about her in the way Abbie was always watching or thinking about the children, she wondered if Grace was not just a bit hard, just a trifle unsympathetic. She seemed to have no patience with inefficiency, no time for any one who was not succeeding.

Abbie was ashamed of herself that she did not get more comfort and companionship out of Grace. She loved her with her whole being, but they seemed to antagonize each other at times. She sometimes admitted reluctantly to herself that Grace was not the daughter which she had dreamed she would be,—a daughter to sit and talk, a companion with whom to hold long discussions. She was too energetic to sit quietly anywhere, and whenever the two held any discussions they usually ended in Abbie having her feelings hurt.

Grace was always impatient with the old order of things, always so sure of herself, so certain that one could accomplish in this world whatever task he set himself to do. Her conversation was always dotted with the words “progress,” “efficiency,” “ideals.” She spoke of everything in generalities: Citizenship, economics, causes, rights. Abbie was all for the individual. “Yes, but old Mrs. Newsome, Grace. How about her?” She could not think of people in masses. A great sympathy would surge up in her heart for the one whom life had used harshly. But when she would express herself, she would be met with a flood of information from Grace, a flat statement of statistics, before which she would be compelled to retire ignominiously.

“Why, I’m glad she’s that way,” Abbie would say to herself. “She’s smart, Grace is. And she’s only twenty-two. When you get older, you get more sympathetic with the underdog. When you grow out of your youthful years you have more charity for folks who haven’t succeeded.” It was so characteristic of Abbie,—charity,—charity that vaunteth not itself and is kind,—that she could not see how others could ever leave it out of their make-up.