Doris filled her private time with useful and enjoyable hours.  She got into closer touch with old friends, saw and heard the best in music and drama, permitted herself the luxury of David Martin’s friendship, and shared his confidences about his sister’s son in the Far West—­a fatherless boy who promised much but often failed in fulfilment.

“Odd, isn’t it, Davey,” Doris sometimes said, “that you and I, having, somehow, lost what is the commonplace road for most men and women, have been called upon to assume many of the joys and sorrows of that broad highway?”

“We none of us go scot free,” Martin returned.  “I’m grateful for every decent, common job thrown at me.”

And so the years passed and Doris had outlined a vague but comprehensive line of action for the immediate months following the girls’ graduation from Dondale.

“I am going to take them abroad,” she announced to Martin; “take them over the route that Merry and I took—­our last journey together.  And, David, in that little Italian town they shall know—­about Meredith and Thornton!”

David started, but made no remark.

“And when we return,” Doris went on, “I am going to bring the girls out—­I hate the term, I’d rather say let them out—­just as Merry and I were, in this dear, old house.  Mrs. Tweksbury and I have planned rather a brilliant campaign.”

And then came that bleak March day—­Joan and Nancy were to graduate in June—­when the hurrying undercurrent in Doris Fletcher’s life brought her to a sharp turn in the stream.

She was sitting in the pleasant old room before a freshly made fire; the fountain trickled and splashed, the birds sang, defying the outdoor gloom and chill, and a letter from Miss Phillips lay upon her lap—­a letter that had made her smile then frown.  She took it up and read it again.

“I am deeply interested in your nieces,” so Miss Phillips wrote; “naturally a woman dealing, as I have for years, with youth in the making, is both blunted and sharpened.  Young girls fall into types—­are comfortably classified and regulated for the most part.  Occasionally, however, the rule has its exceptions.”

Then Miss Phillips expatiated for a page or so, in her big, forceful handwriting, on Nancy’s beauty, sweetness, and charm.

“A fine, feminine creature, my dear Miss Fletcher.  A girl I am proud to refer to as one of mine; a girl to carry on the traditions of such a family as yours—­a lovely, young American woman!”

This was what brought the smile, but as Doris turned over the sheet the smile departed; a grave expression took its place.

“You and I are progressive women,” so the new theme began; “we know the game of life.  We know that where we once played straight whist we now play bridge, but we are fully aware that the fundamentals are the same.

“And now I must explain myself.  For a young girl with the prospects that Joan has her mental equipment is a handicap rather than an asset.  She does everything too well—­except the drudgery of the class room, she has managed to endure that, and with credit, but everything else she accomplishes with distinction.  She lacks utterly any suggestion of amateurishness!