mes she told herself that if Rose had really wanted her, she'd
have pressed the matter harder--wouldn't have given up unless she was
clutching with real relief at an excuse that let her out of an
embarrassment. But at other times she accused herself of having acted in
a petty snobbish spirit in declining the chance not only for pleasant
new friendships, especially Frederica's, but for a closer association
with her sister. Well, the thing was done now, and the question
certainly never would rise again.

The reason why it couldn't arise again was what Portia came to tell Rose
this morning. She hoped she'd be able to tell it gently--provide Rose
with just the facts she'd have to know, and get away without letting any
other facts escape, so that afterward she'd have the consolation of
being able to say to herself, "That was finely done." All her life, she
told herself, she had been doing fine things grudgingly, mutilating them
in the doing. If she weren't very careful, that would happen this
morning. If she could have known the truth and made her resolution, and
confided it to Rose during the first hours of her mother's illness, when
the fight for life had drawn them together, it would not have been hard.
But with the beginning of convalescence, when Rose, with an easy visit
and a few facile caresses, could outweigh in one hour, all of Portia's
unremitting tireless service during the other twenty-three, and carry
off as a prize the whole of her mother's gratitude and affection, the
old envy and irritation had come back threefold.

Rose greeted her with a "Hello, Angel! Why didn't you come right up?
Isn't it disgraceful to be lying around in bed like this in the middle
of the morning?"

"I don't know," said Portia. "Might as well stay in bed, if you've
nothing to do when you get up." She meant it to sound good-humored, but
was afraid it didn't. "Anyhow," she added after a straight look into
Rose's face, "you look, this morning, as if bed was just where you ought
to be. What's the matter with you, child?"

"Nothing," said Rose, "--nothing that you'd call anything at any rate."

Portia smiled ironically. "I'm still the same old dragon, then," she
said. And then, with a gesture of impatience, turned away. She hadn't
meant to begin like that. Why couldn't she keep her tongue in control!

"I only meant," said Rose very simply, "that you'd say it was nothing,
if it was the matter with you. I've seen you, so many times, get up