One day this beautiful serenity was broken in upon in a most unpleasant way. Carol looked up from _De Senectute_ and flung out her arms in an all-relieving yawn. Then she looked at her aunt, asleep on the couch.

She looked at Lark, who was aimlessly drawing feathers on the skeletons of birds in her biology text. She looked at Connie, sitting upright in her chair, a small book close to her face, alert, absorbed, oblivious to the world. Connie was wide awake, and Carol resented it.

"What are you reading, Con?" she asked reproachfully.

Connie looked up, startled, and colored a little. "Oh,--poetry," she stammered.

Carol was surprised. "Poetry," she echoed. "Poetry? What kind of poetry?

There are many poetries in this world of ours. 'Life is real, life is earnest.' 'There was a young lady from Bangor.' 'A man and a maiden decided to wed.' 'Sunset and, evening star,'--oh, there are lots of poetries. What's yours?" Her senseless dissertation had put her in good humor again.

Connie answered evasively. "It is by an old Oriental writer. I don't suppose you've ever read it. Khayyam is his name."

"Some name," said Carol suspiciously. "What's the poem?" Her eyes had narrowed and darkened. By this time Carol had firmly convinced herself that she was bringing Connie up,--a belief which afforded lively amus.e.m.e.nt to self-conducting Connie.

"Why, it's _The Rubaiyat_. It's--"

"_The Rubaiyat!_" Carol frowned. Lark looked up from the skeletons with sudden interest. "_The Rubaiyat?_ By Khayyam? Isn't that the old fellow who didn't believe in G.o.d, and Heaven, and such things--you know what I mean,--the man who didn't believe anything, and wrote about it? Let me see it. I've never read it myself, but I've heard about it." Carol turned the pages with critical disapproving eyes. "Hum, yes, I know about this." She faced Connie sternly. "I suppose you think, Connie, that since we're out of a parsonage we can do anything we like. Haven't we any standards? Haven't we any ideals? Are we--are we--well, anyhow, what business has a minister's daughter reading trash like this?"

"I don't believe it, you know," Connie said coolly. "I'm only reading it. How can I know whether it's trash or not, unless I read it? I--"

"Ministers' daughters are supposed to keep their fingers clear of the burning ends of matches," said Carol neatly. "We can't handle them without getting scorched, or blackened, at least. We have to steer clear of things folks aren't sure about. Prudence says so."

"Prudence," said Connie gravely, "is a dear sweet thing, but she's awfully old-fashioned, Carol; you know that."

Carol and Lark were speechless. They would as soon have dreamed of questioning the catechism as Prudence's perfection.

"She's narrow. She's a darling, of course, but she isn't up-to-date. I want to know what folks are talking about. I don't believe this poem.

I'm a Christian. But I want to know what other folks think about me and what I believe. That's all. Prudence is fine, but I know a good deal more about some things than Prudence will know when she's a thousand years old."

The twins still sat silent.

"Of course, some folks wouldn't approve of parsonage girls reading things like this. But I approve of it. I want to know why I disagree with this poetry, and I can't until I know where we disagree. It's beautiful, Carol, really. It's kind of sad. It makes me want to cry.

It's--"

"I've a big notion to tell papa on you," said Carol soberly and sadly.

Connie rose at once.

"What's the matter?"

"I'm going to tell papa myself."

Carol moved uneasily in her chair. "Oh, let it go this time. I--I just mentioned it to relieve my feelings. I won't tell him yet. I'll talk it over with you again. I'll have to think it over first."

"I think I'd rather tell him," insisted Connie.

Carol looked worried, but she knew Connie would do as she said. So she got up nervously and went with her. She would have to see it through now, of course. Connie walked silently up the stairs, with Carol following meekly behind, and rapped at her father's door. Then she entered, and Carol, in a hushed sort of way, closed the door behind them.

"I'm reading this, father. Any objections?" Connie faced him calmly, and handed him the little book.

He examined it gravely, his brows contracting, a sudden wrinkling at the corners of his lips that might have meant laughter, or disapproval, or anything.

"I thought a parsonage girl should not read it," Carol said bravely.

"I've never read it myself, but I've heard about it, and parsonage girls ought to read parsonage things. Prudence says so. But--"

"But I want to know what other folks think about what I believe," said Connie. "So I'm reading it."

"What do you think of, it?" he asked quietly, and he looked very strangely at his baby daughter. It was suddenly borne in on him that this was one crisis in her growth to womanhood, and he felt a great yearning tenderness for her, in her innocence, in her dauntless courage, in her reaching ahead, always ahead! It was a crisis, and he must be very careful.

"I think it is beautiful," Connie said softly, and her lips drooped a little, and a wistful pathos crept into her voice. "It seems so sad. I keep wishing I could cry about it. There's nothing really sad in it, I think it is supposed to be rather jovial, but--it seems terrible to me, even when it is the most beautiful. Part of it I don't understand very well."

He held out a hand to Connie, and she put her own in it confidently.

Carol, too, came and stood close beside him.

"Yes," he said, "it is beautiful, Connie, and it is very terrible. We can't understand it fully because we can't feel what he felt. It is a groping poem, a struggling for light when one is stumbling in darkness."

He looked thoughtfully at the girls. "He was a marvelous man, that Khayyam,--years ahead of his people, and his time. He was big enough to see the idiocy of the heathen ideas of G.o.d, he was beyond them, he spurned them. But he was not quite big enough to reach out, alone, and get hold of our kind of a G.o.d. He was reaching out, he was struggling, but he couldn't quite catch hold. It is a wonderful poem. It shows the weakness, the helplessness of a gifted man who has nothing to cling to.

I think it will do you good to read it, Connie. Read it again and again, and thank G.o.d, my child, that though you are only a girl, you have the very thing this man, this genius, was craving. We admire his talent, but we pity his weakness. You will feel sorry for him. You read it, too, Carol. You'll like it. We can't understand it, as I say, because we are so sure of our G.o.d, that we can't feel what he felt, having nothing. But we can feel the heart-break, the fear, the shrinking back from the Providence that he called Fate,--of course it makes you want to cry, Connie. It is the saddest poem in the world."

Connie's eyes were very bright. She winked hard a few times, choking back the rush of tears. Then with an impulsiveness she did not often show, she lifted her father's hand and kissed it pa.s.sionately.

"Oh, father," she whispered, "I was so afraid--you wouldn't quite see."

She kissed his hand again.

Carol looked at her sister respectfully. "Connie," she said, "I certainly beg your pardon. I just wanted to be clever, and didn't know what I was talking about. When you have finished it, give it to me, will you? I want to read it, too; I think it must be wonderful."

She held out a slender shapely hand and Connie took it quickly, chummily, and the two girls turned toward the door.

"The danger in reading things," said Mr. Starr, and they paused to listen, "the danger is that we may find arguments we can not answer; we may feel that we have been in the wrong, that what we read is right.

There's the danger. Whenever you find anything like that, Connie, will you bring it to me? I think I can find the answer for you. If I don't know it, I will look until I come upon it. For we have been given an answer to every argument. You'll come to me, won't you?"

"Yes, father, I will--I know you'll find the answers."

After the door had closed behind them, Mr. Starr sat for a long time staring straight before him into s.p.a.ce.

"The Connie problem," he said at last. And then, "I'll have to be better pals with her. Connie's going to be pretty fine, I believe."

CHAPTER XIV

BOOSTING CONNIE

Connie was past fifteen when she announced gravely one day, "I've changed my mind. I'm going to be an author."

"An author," scoffed Carol. "You! I thought you were going to get married and have eleven children." Even with the dignity of nineteen years, the nimble wits of Carol and Lark still struggled with the irreproachable gravity of Connie.

"I was," was the cool retort. "I thought you were going to be a Red Cross nurse and go to war."