“No one can help liking her.  She’s a girl of impulses and her impulses are all healthy and sound.  And her good fellowship and good feeling are inexhaustible.  She came over to see me at Elizabeth House the other evening—­had Allen bring her in his machine and leave her.  The girls were singing songs and amusing themselves in the parlor, and Marian took off her hat and made herself at home with them.  She sang several songs, and then got to ‘cutting up’ and did some of those dances she’s picked up somewhere—­did them well too.  But with all her nonsense she has a lot of good common sense, and she will find a place for herself.  She will get married one of these days and settle down beautifully.”

“Allen?”

“Possibly.  The Bassetts don’t seem troubled by Allen’s attentions to Marian; but the real fight between Mr. Thatcher and Mr. Bassett hasn’t come yet.”

“Who says so?”

“Oh, it’s in the air; every one says so.  Dan says so.”

“I’ve warned Morton to let Edward Thatcher alone.  The United States Senate wouldn’t be ornamented by having either one of them down there.  I met Colonel Ramsay—­guess he’s got the senatorial bee in his hat, too—­coming up on the train from Louisville the other day.  There’s only one qualification I can think of that the Colonel has for going to the Senate—­he would wring tears out of the galleries when he made obituary speeches about the dead members.  When my brother Blackford was senator, it seemed to me he spent most of his time acting as pallbearer for the dead ones.  But what were we talking about, Sylvia?  Oh, yes.  I’m going to send those catalogues over to your room, and as you get time I want you to study out a scheme for a little school to teach what you call efficiency to girls that have to earn their living.  I don’t mean school-teaching, but a whole lot of things women ought to be doing but ain’t because they don’t know how.  Do you get the idea?”

“A school?” asked Sylvia wonderingly.

“A kind of school.”

“It’s a splendid, a beautiful idea, but you need better advice than I can give you.  They talk a good deal now about vocational training, and it’s going to mean a great deal to women.”

“Well, we must get hold of all the latest ideas, and if there’s any good in us old daguerreotypes, we’ll keep it, and graft it on to the kodak.”

“Oh, I hope there will always be ladies of the daguerreotype!  One thing we women have to pray to be saved from is intolerance toward our sisters.  You know,” continued Sylvia with a dropping of her voice and a tilting of her head that caused Mrs. Owen to laugh,—­“you know we are not awfully tolerant.  And there’s a breadth of view, an ability to brush away trifles and get to the heart of things, that we’re just growing up to.  And magnanimity—­I think we fall short there.  I’m just now trying to cultivate a sisterly feeling toward these good women for whom Jane Austen and Sir Roger de Coverley and