“The trouble is, I can’t earn anything in college,” objected Gilbert, “though I’d like to.”

“That will be the only way a college course can come to you now, Gilbert,” his mother said quietly.  “You know nothing of the expenses involved.  They would have taxed our resources to the utmost if father had lived, and we had had our more than five thousand a year!  You and I together must think out your problem this summer.”

Gilbert looked blank and walked to the window with his hands in his pockets.

“I should lose all my friends, and it’s hard for a fellow to make his way in the world if he has nothing to recommend him but his graduation from some God-forsaken little hole like Beulah Academy.”

Nancy looked as if she could scalp her brother when he alluded to her beloved village in these terms, but her mother’s warning look stopped any comment.

Julia took up arms for her cousin.  “We ought to go without everything for the sake of sending Gilbert to college,” she said.  “Gladys Ferguson doesn’t know a single boy who isn’t going to Harvard or Yale.”

“If a boy of good family and good breeding cannot make friends by his own personality and his own qualities of mind and character, I should think he would better go without them,” said Gilbert’s mother casually.

“Don’t you believe in a college education, mother?” inquired Gilbert in an astonished tone.

“Certainly!  Why else should we have made sacrifices to send you?  To begin with, it is much simpler and easier to be educated in college.  You have a thousand helps and encouragements that other fellows have to get as they may.  The paths are all made straight for the students.  A stupid boy, or one with small industry or little originality, must have something drummed into him in four years, with all the splendid teaching energy that the colleges employ.  It requires a very high grade of mental and moral power to do without such helps, and it may be that you are not strong enough to succeed without them;—­I do not know your possibilities yet, Gilbert, and neither do you know them yourself!”

Gilbert looked rather nonplussed.  “Pretty stiff, I call it!” he grumbled, “to say that if you’ve got brains enough you can do without college.”

“It is true, nevertheless.  If you have brains enough, and will enough, and heart enough, you can stay here in Beulah and make the universe search you out, and drag you into the open, where men have need of you!” (Mrs. Carey’s eyes shone and her cheeks glowed.) “What we all want as a family is to keep well and strong and good, in body and mind and soul; to conquer our weaknesses, to train our gifts, to harness our powers to some wished-for end, and then pull, with all our might.  Can’t my girls be fine women, fit for New York or Washington, London or Paris, because their young days were passed in Beulah?  Can’t my boys be anything that their brains and courage fit them for, whether they make their own associations or have them made for them?  Father would never have flung the burden on your shoulders, Gilbert, but he is no longer here.  You can’t have the help of Yale or Harvard or Bowdoin to make a man of you, my son,—­you will have to fight your own battles and win your own spurs.”