She thereupon reasoned that it would score with her aunt if she employed “that girl” to coach the delinquent Blackford.  It would at any rate do no harm to manifest a friendly interest in her aunt’s protegee, who would doubtless be glad of a chance to earn a little pin-money.  She first proposed the matter to her aunt, who declared promptly that it must be for Sylvia to say; that Sylvia was busy writing a book (she was revising her grandfather’s textbook), besides helping to entertain the Elizabeth House guests; but when the matter was referred to Sylvia, she cheerfully agreed to give Blackford two hours a day.

Sylvia quickly established herself on terms of good comradeship with her pupil.  Blackford was old enough to find the proximity of a pretty girl agreeable, and Sylvia was sympathetic and encouraging.  When he confided to her his hopes of a naval career (he had finally renounced the Army) Sylvia sent off to Annapolis for the entrance requirements.  She told him of her Grandfather Kelton’s service in the Navy and recounted some of the old professor’s exploits in the Civil War.  The stories Sylvia had heard at her grandfather’s knee served admirably as a stimulus.  As the appointments to Annapolis had to be won in competitive examinations she soon persuaded him that the quicker he buckled down to hard study the sooner he would attain the goal.  This matter arranged, Mrs. Bassett went back to bed, where she received Sylvia occasionally and expressed her sorrow that Mrs. Owen, at her time of life, should be running a boarding-house for a lot of girls who were better off at work.  Her aunt was merely making them dissatisfied with their lot.  She did not guess the import of the industries in Mrs. Owen’s kitchen, as reported through various agencies; they were merely a new idiosyncracy of her aunt’s old age, a deplorable manifestation of senility.

Sylvia was a comfortable confessor; Mrs. Bassett said many things to her that she would have liked to say to Mrs. Owen, with an obscure hope that they might in due course be communicated to that inexplicable old woman.  And Sylvia certainly was past; mistress of the difficult art of brushing hair without tangling and pulling it, thereby tearing one’s nerves to shreds—­as the nurse did.  Mrs. Owen’s visits were only occasional, but they usually proved disturbing.  She sniffed at the nurse and advised her niece to get up.  She knew a woman in Terre Haute who went to bed on her thirtieth birthday and left it only to be buried in her ninetieth year.  Sylvia was a far more consoling visitor to this invalid propped up on pillows amid a litter of magazines, with the cool lake at her elbow.  Sylvia did not pooh-pooh Christian Science and New Thought and such things with which Mrs. Bassett was disposed to experiment.  Sylvia even bestowed upon her a boon in the shape of the word “psychotherapy.”  Mrs. Bassett liked it, and declared that if she read a paper before the Fraserville Woman’s Club the next winter—­a service to which she was solemnly pledged—­psychotherapy should be her subject.  Thus Mrs. Bassett found Sylvia serviceable and comforting.  And the girl knew her place, and all.