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“People?” asked Anne. “Figuravely? Don’t you mean that to be—— What are those stories? You know! All-all glory, or something?”

“Allegories. And figuratively, Anne. Yes, dear. It would be a beautiful vocation to help people to walk, wouldn’t it? And it’s sure to be yours if you’re a good woman, as I pray you will be. One way or another all good women put people on their feet.”

Mrs. Berkley hastily got her needle where it could do no harm, for she saw what was coming.

Anne scrambled to her feet, leaving her beetle on his back, vainly imploring the ceiling with his many active legs. Big girl that she was she threw herself upon her mother’s lap, and hugged her hard.

“Like you, just for all the world, ’xactly like you, you most precious, beautiful motherkins, Barbara Berkley!” Anne choked herself in choking her mother. “You help everybody in this family on their feet, and you just lead ’em right along! I wonder where’d I’d be if ’twasn’t for you showing me lovely things? Just like black beetle allegories this minute! My father, Peter Berkley, wouldn’t be hardly anything if ’twasn’t for you! You know yourself he’d never in this world remember rubbers! And prob’ly he’d die of it. And Joan—well, what in the world do you s’pose she’d do with the baby if she didn’t ask you? And as to Peter-two——!” Words for once failed Anne. Her opinion of her obstreperous fourteen-year-old brother was luckily deprived of expression. He was surer of his own vocation than Anne was of hers; it was clear to him that his calling in life was to suppress Anne.