The Precipice | Page 5

"bed of
daffodil sky." Kate felt waves of beauty and tenderness breaking over
her and wanted to cry. Her mother wanted to and did. Neither trusted
herself to speak, but when they were in the house Mrs. Barrington
pulled the pins out of Kate's hat and then Kate took the faded, gentle
woman in her strong arms and crushed her to her.
"Your father was afraid he wouldn't be home in time to meet you," said
Mrs. Barrington when they were in the parlor, where the Dresden vases
stood on the marble mantel and the rose-jar decorated the three-sided
table in the corner. "It was just his luck to be called into the country. If
it had been a really sick person who wanted him, I wouldn't have
minded, but it was only Venie Sampson."
"Still having fits?" asked Kate cheerfully, as one glad to recognize even
the chronic ailments of a familiar community.
"Well, she thinks she has them," said Mrs. Barrington in an easy,

gossiping tone; "but my opinion is that she wouldn't be troubled with
them if only there were some other way in which she could call
attention to herself. You see, Venie was a very pretty girl."
"Has that made her an invalid, mummy?"
"Well, it's had something to do with it. When she was young she
received no end of attention, but some way she went through the woods
and didn't even pick up a crooked stick. But she got so used to being
the center of interest that when she found herself growing old and plain,
she couldn't think of any way to keep attention fixed on her except by
having these collapses. You know you mustn't call the attacks 'fits.'
Venie's far too refined for that."
Kate smiled broadly at her mother's distinctive brand of humor. She
loved it all--Miss Sampson's fits, her mother's jokes; even the fact that
when they went out to supper she sat where she used in the old days
when she had worn a bib beneath her chin.
"Oh, the plates, the cups, the everything!" cried Kate, ridiculously
lifting a piece of the "best china" to her lips and kissing it.
"Absurdity!" reproved her mother, but she adored the girl's
extravagances just the same.
"Everything's glorious," Kate insisted. "Cream cheese and parsley! Did
you make it, mummy? Currant rolls--oh, the wonders! Martha
Underwood, don't dare to die without showing me how to make those
currant rolls. Veal loaf--now, what do you think of that? Why, at Foster
we went hungry sometimes--not for lack of quantity, of course, but
because of the quality. I used to be dreadfully ashamed of the fact that
there we were, dozens of us women in that fine hall, and not one of us
with enough domestic initiative to secure a really good table. I tried to
head an insurrection and to have now one girl and now another
supervise the table, but the girls said they hadn't come to college to
keep house."
"Yes, yes," chimed in her mother excitedly; "that's where the whole

trouble with college for women comes in. They not only don't go to
college to keep house, but most of them mean not to keep it when they
come out. We allowed you to go merely because you overbore us. You
used to be a terrible little tyrant, Katie,--almost as bad as--"
She brought herself up suddenly.
"As bad as whom, mummy?"
There was a step on the front porch and Mrs. Barrington was spared the
need for answering.
"There's your father," she said, signaling Kate to meet him.
* * * * *
Dr. Barrington was tall, spare, and grizzled. The torpor of the little
town had taken the light from his eyes and reduced the tempo of his
movements, but, in spite of all, he had preserved certain vivid features
of his personality. He had the long, educated hands of the surgeon and
the tyrannical aspect of the physician who has struggled all his life with
disobedience and perversity. He returned Kate's ardent little storm of
kisses with some embarrassment, but he was unfeignedly pleased at her
appearance, and as the three of them sat about the table in their old
juxtaposition, his face relaxed. However, Kate had seen her mother
look up wistfully as her husband passed her, as if she longed for some
affectionate recognition of the occasion, but the man missed his
opportunity and let it sink into the limbo of unimproved moments.
"Well, father, we have our girl home again," Mrs. Barrington said with
pardonable sentiment.
"Well, we've been expecting her, haven't we?" Dr. Barrington replied,
not ill-naturedly but with a marked determination to make the episode
matter-of-fact.
"Indeed we have," smiled Mrs. Barrington. "But of course it couldn't
mean to you, Frederick, what