where they started, and I _could_ help them!"

"It was probably the best thing you could have done for yourself, at the
same time," Richard interpolated, with a swift glance.

"Oh, absolutely!" Julia laughed a little sadly. "I was like an animal
that goes out and eats a weed: I had a wild instinct that if I rushed
into my grandmother's house, and bullied everybody there, and simply
shrieked and stamped on the dirt and laziness and complaining, on the
whole wretched system that I grew up under, in short, that it would be a
heavenly relief! My dear Richie," and Julia laughed again, and more
naturally, "I wonder they didn't tar and feather me, and throw me out of
the house! I scoured and burned and scolded and bossed them all like a
madwoman. I told them that we had enough money to keep the house
decently, and always had had, but, my dear! I never dreamed the whole
crowd would fall in line so soon!"

"But, my Lord, Julie, what else could they do? You were paying all the
expenses, I suppose?"

"No, indeed I wasn't! Chester has a pretty fair salary now, and my
aunt's boys are awfully good about helping out. And then Muriel has a
position, and Evelyn is in a fair way to be a rich woman. Besides, the
mere question of where money is coming from never worried my people!
They managed as well with almost nothing at all, as with a really
adequate amount--which is to say that they don't know in the least what
the word manage means! Jim left me an immense sum, Rich, but I've never
touched anything but the interest. When we shingled or carpeted or
gardened out there, we paid for it by degrees, and it cost, I must
admit, only about one third of what it would have been on the other side
of town. I look back now at those first months, more than four years
ago," went on Julia, smiling as she leaned forward in her low chair, her
hands locked about her knees, her thoughtful eyes on the flickering
logs, "and I wonder we didn't all rise up in the night and kill each
other. I was like a person with a death wound, struggling madly through
the little time left me, absolutely indifferent to what any one thought.
I simply wanted to die fighting, to register one furious protest against
all the things I'd hated, and suffered, too! I remember reporters
coming, at first, wild with curiosity to know what took Doctor
Studdiford abroad, and why Mrs. Studdiford was living in a labourer's
house in the Mission. What impression they got I haven't the fai