m.

"Then," replied Ruth, "I shall have to go without your allowing it."

"What do you mean?" demanded Tom.

"Why--just what I say. I'm of age. If I were a man, I wouldn't have to
ask my older brother's permission."

"And how do you intend to live?"

"On my income," said Ruth. "I bless father now for that stock he left
me. Eight hundred dollars a year has been small for me so far. I have
had to have help, I know, but it will support my new life. I never was
really grateful to father for that money till now. It makes me
independent of you, Tom."

Edith, glaring inimically from her corner, exclaimed, "Grateful to her
father! That's good!"

"My dear girl," said Tom, "we've never told you before, because we hoped
to spare your feelings, but the time has come now. That stock father
left you hasn't paid a dividend for a dozen years. It isn't worth its
weight in paper. I have paid four hundred dollars, and Edith has been
kind and generous enough to contribute four hundred dollars more, to
keep you in carfares, young lady. It isn't much in order to talk of your
independence around here."

The color mounted to Ruth's cheeks. She straightened. "What do you
mean?" she asked.

"Exactly what I say. You haven't a penny of income. Edith and I are
responsible for your living, and I want you to understand clearly that I
shall not support a line of conduct which does not meet with my
approval. Nor Edith either, I rather imagine."

"No, indeed, I won't," snapped out Edith. "I shan't pay a cent more.
It's only rank ingratitude I get for it anyhow."

"Do you mean to say," said Ruth in a low voice--there was no flippancy
to her now--"I've been living on Edith's charity, and yours, all these
years? That I haven't anything of my own--not even my clothes--not even
_this_," she touched a blue enameled watch and chain about her neck,
"which I saved and saved so for? Haven't I any income? Haven't I a cent
that's mine, Tom?"

"Not a red cent, Ruth--just some papers that we might as well put into
the fireplace and burn up."

"Oh," she burst forth, "how unfair--how cruel and unfair!"

"There's gratitude for you," threw in Edith.

"To bring me up," went on Ruth, "under a delusion. To let me go on, year
after year, thinking I was provided for, and then suddenly, when it
pleases you, to tell me that I'm an absolute dependent, a creature of
charity. Oh, how cruel that is! You tell me I ought to be grateful.
Well, I'm not--I'm not grat