. "I wonder how you stood it."

"You were so obstinate. You came to me as 'cook and housekeeper,' and as
cook and housekeeper, and as nothing else, would you remain. If I
suggested any change, up would go your chin into the air. I dared not
even dine out too often, you were such a little tyrant. The only thing
you were always ready to do, if I wasn't satisfied, was to march out of
the house and leave me. Wherever did you get that savage independence of
yours?"

"I don't know. I think it must have been from a woman--perhaps she was
my mother; I don't know--who used to sit up in the bed and cough, all
night it seemed to me. People would come to see us--ladies in fine
clothes, and gentlemen with oily hair. I think they wanted to help us.
Many of them had kind voices. But always a hard look would come into her
face, and she would tell them what even then I knew to be untrue--it was
one of the first things I can recollect--that we had everything we
wanted, that we needed no help from anyone. They would go away,
shrugging their shoulders. I grew up with the feeling that seemed to
have been burnt into my brain, that to take from anybody anything you had
not earned was shameful. I don't think I could do it even now, not even
from you. I am useful to you, dad--I do help you?"

There had crept a terror into Tommy's voice. Peter felt the little hands
upon his arm trembling.

"Help me? Why, you work like a nigger--like a nigger is supposed to
work, but doesn't. No one--whatever we paid him--would do half as much.
I don't want to make your head more swollen than it is, young woman, but
you have talent; I am not sure it is not genius." Peter felt the little
hands tighten upon his arm.

"I do want this paper to be a success; that is why I strum upon the piano
to please Clodd. Is it humbug?"

"I am afraid it is; but humbug is the sweet oil that helps this whirling
world of ours to spin round smoothly. Too much of it cloys: we drop it
very gently."

"But you are sure it is only humbug, Tommy?" It was Peter's voice into
which fear had entered now. "It is not that you think he understands you
better than I do--would do more for you?"

"You want me to tell you all I think of you, and that isn't good for you,
dad--not too often. It would be you who would have swelled head then."

"I am jealous, Tommy, jealous of everyone that comes near you. Life is a
tragedy for us old folks. We know there must come a day