The story started well, with a female school superintendent in Nebraska riding around (via horse and carriage, of course) to visit the little schoolrooms in her district. She is a mentor to one of the younger teachers, and it's very charming. But then the story goes all over the place, and ultimately doesn't have much of an ending. It seems the story's "purpose" is to allow the mother of the mentored teacher to talk about people's "best years" being the ones when they're simply working hard, rather than the years when they may have achieved some success but lost some of the simple pleasures.

I think this was one of Cather's last three published short stories, so I would have thought by then that she would have a better idea of "story," but maybe she was just meant to be a novelist. ( )