--said I was
going to get a job. I got her to tell me how things stood, and she did,
as well as she could. The boys were getting their college education out
of the capital of father's estate, so that the income of it was getting
smaller. She had meant that I should do the same. But the income wasn't
really big enough to live on as it was.

"Mother could earn money of course, lecturing and writing, but money
wasn't one of the things she naturally thought about, and when there was
something big and worth while to do, she plunged in and did it whether
it was going to pay her anything or not. And there were you coming
along, and mother wasn't so very strong even then, and I--well, I saw
where I came in.

"I got mother to let me run all the accounts after that, and attend to
everything. And I got a job and began paying my way within a week."

"If I had a thing like that to remember," said Rose unsteadily, "I'd
never forget to be proud of it so long as I lived!"

"I wish I could be proud of it," said Portia. "But, like everything else
I do, I spoiled it. I knew that mother was doing a big fine work worth
doing--worth my making a sacrifice for, and I wanted to make the
sacrifice. But I couldn't help making a sort of grievance of it, too. In
all these years I've always made mother afraid of me--always made her
feel that I was, somehow, contemptuous of her work and ideas. That's
rather a strong way of putting it, perhaps. But I've seen her trying to
hide her enthusiasms from me a little, because of my nasty way of
sticking pins in them.

"Oh, of course in a way I was making the enthusiasms possible--I knew
that. She never could have gone on as she did if she'd been nagged at
all the time for money. Big ideas are always more important to her than
small facts, but without some narrow-minded, literal person to look
after the facts her ideas wouldn't have had much chance. I grubbed away
until I got things straightened out, so that her income was enough
to live on--enough for her to live on. I'd pulled her through. But
then ..."

"But then there was me," said Rose.

"I thought I was going to let you go," Portia went on inflexibly. "You'd
got to be just the age I was when I went to work, and I said there was
no reason why you shouldn't come in for your share. If things had
happened a little differently, I'd have told mother how matters stood
and you'd have got a job somewhere and gone to work. But things didn't
come out that