w--" but Mrs. Brandeis shook her
head and went on. She told Fanny a few things about her early married
life--things that made Fanny look at her with new eyes. She had always
thought of her mother as her mother, in the way a fourteen-year-old
girl does. It never occurred to her that this mother person, who was
so capable, so confident, so worldly-wise, had once been a very young
bride, with her life before her, and her hopes stepping high, and her
love keeping time with her hopes. Fanny heard, fascinated, the story
of this girl who had married against the advice of her family and her
friends.

Molly Brandeis talked curtly and briefly, and her very brevity and lack
of embroidering details made the story stand out with stark realism. It
was such a story of courage, and pride, and indomitable will, and sheer
pluck as can only be found among the seemingly commonplace.

"And so," she finished, "I used to wonder, sometimes, whether it
was worth while to keep on, and what it was all for. And now I know.
Theodore is going to make up for everything. Only we'll have to help
him, first. It's going to be hard on you, Fanchen. I'm talking to you as
if you were eighteen, instead of fourteen. But I want you to understand.
That isn't fair to you either--my expecting you to understand. Only I
don't want you to hate me too much when you're a woman, and I'm gone,
and you'll remember--"

"Why, Mother, what in the world are you talking about? Hate you!"

"For what I took from you to give to him, Fanny. You don't understand
now. Things must be made easy for Theodore. It will mean that you and
I will have to scrimp and save. Not now and then, but all the time.
It will mean that we can't go to the theater, even occasionally, or to
lectures, or concerts. It will mean that your clothes won't be as pretty
or as new as the other girls' clothes. You'll sit on the front porch
evenings, and watch them go by, and you'll want to go too."

"As if I cared."

"But you will care. I know. I know. It's easy enough to talk about
sacrifice in a burst of feeling; but it's the everyday, shriveling grind
that's hard. You'll want clothes, and books, and beaux, and education,
and you ought to have them. They're your right. You ought to have them!"
Suddenly Molly Brandeis' arms were folded on the table, and her head
came down on her arms and she was crying, quietly, horribly, as a man
cries. Fanny stared at her a moment in unbelief. She had not seen her
mother