ur influence, Lorraine dear, to make Charles Edward take more interest
in the business--his father thinks so much of that."

If I were to tell them that Charles Edward perfectly detests the
business, and will NEVER be interested in it and never make anything out
of it, they'd all go straight off the handle; yet they all know it just
as well as I do. That's the trouble--you simply can't tell them the
truth about anything; they don't want to hear it. I never talk at all
any more when I go over to the big house, for I can't seem to without
horrifying somebody.

I thought I should die when I first came here; it was so different
from the way it is at home, where you can say or do anything you please
without caring what anybody thinks. Dad has always believed in not
restricting individuality, and that girls have just as much right to
live their own lives as boys--which is a fortunate thing, for, counting
Momsey, there are four of us.

We never had any system about anything at home, thank goodness! We just
had atmosphere. Dad was an artist, you know, and he does paint such
lovely pictures; but he gave it up as a profession when we were little,
and went into business, because, he said, he couldn't let his family
starve--and we all think it was so perfectly noble of him! I couldn't
give up being an artist for anybody, no matter WHO starved, and Peter
feels that way, too. Of course we both realize that we're not LIVING
here in this hole, we're simply existing, and nothing matters very
much until we get out of it. In six months, when Charles Edward is
twenty-five, there's a little money coming to him--three thousand
dollars--and then we're going to Paris to live our own lives; but nobody
knows anything about that. One day I said something, without thinking,
to my mother-in-law about that money; I've forgotten what it was, but
she looked so horrified and actually gasped:

"You wouldn't think of Charles Edward's using his PRINCIPAL, Lorraine?"

And I said: "Why not? It's his own principal."

Well, I just made up my mind afterward that I'd never open my mouth
again, while I live here, about ANYTHING I was interested in, even about
Peter!

His father might have let him go to Paris that year before we met,
when he was in New York at the Art League, just as well as not, but
the family all consulted about it, Peter says, and concluded it wasn't
"necessary." That is the blight that is always put on everything we want
to do--it isn