pointed out in your letters, was why I should find it preferable to
going to my mother's. Was it not so?"

"If you had gone to mother's, would you have expected to upset the
entire schedule of family affairs?" he demanded.

In reply she rose and stood drumming lightly with her fingers on the
table-top.

"'Daughter am I in my mother's house, but Mistress in mine own,'" she
quoted.

Hamilton Burton took several turns back and forth across the floor. The
whole situation was surprising and intolerable. Never had son or brother
been more lavish in waving the magician's wand for the pleasure of his
family, but never had any other member forgotten for an instant the
obedience they owed to his paramount genius. Men who fought him, he
could crush, and did crush ruthlessly and with no afterthought, but his
own sister, crossing his will, became a problem of more difficult
solution.

"It is a trifle whether you breakfast in bed or not," he said suddenly,
halting in his walk and standing before her. "It is vital that you
remember that you are a girl and that I am the head of this family,
whose right and duty it is to direct you. It was I who brought this
family out of obscurity and drudgery. But for me you would now be
mending some lumberjack's socks and washing his dishes and living in the
gray monotony of unvaried days. There has been only one productive
member in our household and that is myself. There has been just one who
could, with no outside aid, meet the world and conquer it, and the