'I KNOW he's going to succeed. I KNOW he'll be a rich
man before he dies.'"

She shook her head dispassionately. Her manner expressed
fatigued failure to comprehend why he was making so much
of this purposeless point.

"No--I don't remember ever having said that to myself,"
she admitted, listlessly. Then a comment upon his words
occurred to her, and she spoke with more animation:
"You don't seem to understand, Joel, that what was very
important to you, didn't occupy me at all. You were
always talking about getting rich; you kept the idea
before you of sometime, at a stroke, finding yourself
a millionaire. That's been the idea of your life.
But what do I know about all that? My work has been
to keep a roof over my head--to keep the little business
from disappearing altogether. It's been hard enough,
I can tell you, these last few years, with the big
jobbers cutting the hearts out of the small traders.
I had the invalid husband to support for between three
and four years--a dead weight on me every week--and then
the children to look after, to clothe and educate."

At the last word she hesitated suddenly, and looked
at him. "Don't think I'm ungrateful"--she went on,
with a troubled effort at a smile--"but I almost wish
you'd never sent me that four hundred pounds at all.
What it means is that they've had two years at schools
where now I shan't be able to keep them any longer.