“Foolish child,” she answered, “that’s it—­the knowing.  When you don’t know, it isn’t it.”

“My dear Miss North,” remarked Roger, “the heads of your argument are somewhat involved, but I think I grasp your meaning.  When you know it is, then it is, but when you don’t know that it is, then it isn’t.  Is that right?”

“Exactly.  Wonderfully intelligent for one so young.”

Barbara’s blue eyes danced merrily and her red lips parted in a mocking smile.  A long heavy braid of hair, “the colour of ripe corn,” hung over either shoulder and into her lap.  She was almost twenty-two, but she still clung to the childish fashion of dressing her hair, because the heavy braids and the hairpins made her head ache.  All her gowns were white, either of wool or cotton, and were made to be washed.  On Sundays, she sometimes wore blue ribbons on her braids.

[Sidenote:  Simply Barbara]

To Roger, she was very fair.  He never thought of her crutches because she had always been lame.  She was simply Barbara, and Barbara needed crutches.  It had never occurred to him that she might in any way be different, for he was not one of those restless souls who are forever making people over to fit their own patterns.

“Why doesn’t your father like to have me come here?” asked Roger, irrelevantly.

“Why doesn’t your mother like to have you come?” queried Barbara, quickly on the defensive.

“No, but tell me.  Please!”

“Father always goes to bed early.”

“But not at eight o’clock.  It was a quarter of eight when I came, and by eight he was gone.”

“It isn’t you, Roger,” she said, unwillingly; “it’s anyone.  I’m all he has, and if I talk much to other people he feels as if I were being taken away from him—­that’s all.  It’s natural, I suppose.  You mustn’t mind him.”

“But I wouldn’t hurt him,” returned Roger, softly; “you know that.”

“I know.”

“I wish you could make him understand that I come to see every one of you.”

[Sidenote:  Hard Work]

“It’s the hardest work in the world,” sighed Barbara, “to make people understand things.”

“Somebody said once that all the wars had been caused by one set of people trying to force their opinions upon another set, who did not desire to have their minds changed.”

“Very true.  I wonder, sometimes, if we have done right with father.”

“I’m sure you have,” said Roger, gently.  “You couldn’t do anything wrong if you tried.”

“We haven’t meant to,” she answered, her sweet face growing grave.  “Of course it was all begun long before I was old enough to understand.  He thinks the city house, which we lost so long ago that I cannot even remember our having it, was sold for so high a price that it would have been foolish not to sell it, and that we live here because we prefer the country.  Just think, Roger, before I was born, this was father’s and mother’s Summer home, and now it’s all we have.”