upper middle-class household. Candles and flowers on the table and
a neat waitress to serve; little carefully planned shopping
expeditions; fine hand-sewing on dainty undergarments for rainy days;
small tributes of books and candy; invitations and consultations as
to what to wear; choir practice, a class in the Sunday school, a
little work among the poor; the volcano which had been Nina
overflowing elsewhere in a smart little house with a butler out on
the Ridgely Road.

She looked what she was, faithful and quietly loyal, steady--and
serene; not asking greatly but hoping much; full of small
unvisualized dreams and little inarticulate prayers; waiting, without
knowing that she was waiting.

Sometimes she worried. She thought she ought to "do something." A
good many of the girls she knew wanted to do something, but they were
vague as to what. She felt at those times that she was not being
very useful, and she had gone so far as to lay the matter before her
father a couple of years before, when she was just eighteen.

"Just what do you think of doing?" he had inquired.

"That's it," she had said despondently. "I don't know. I haven't
any particular talent, you know. But I don't think I ought to go on
having you support me in idleness all my life."

"Well, I don't think it likely that I'll have to," he had observed,
dryly. "But here's the point, and I think it's important. I don't
intend to work without some compensation, and my family is my
compensation. You just hang around and make me happy, as you do,