"But you know perfectly well," she protests, softly, "that Dick makes us
such a liberal allowance in order that I needn't go out and earn money.
He has often said that. Even when you praise him for his dutifulness to
you, he says it's not that, but his love for me. And because it is the
free gift of his love, I'm willing to accept it."

"I suppose so, I suppose so," says the man, in a tone of resignation to
injury. "It's very little that I'm considered, after all. You were always
a pair, always insensible of the pains I've taken over you. You always
seemed to regard it as a matter of course that I should feed you, and
clothe you, and educate you."

The girl sighs, and begins faintly to touch the keys of the piano again.
The man sighs, too, and continues, with a heightened note of personal
grievance:

"If any man's hopes ever came to shipwreck, mine have. Just look back
over my life. Look at the professional career I gave up when I married
your mother, in order to be with her more than I otherwise could have
been. Look how poorly we lived, she and I, on the little income she
brought me. And then the burden of you children! And what some men would
have felt a burden, as you grew up, I made a source of hopes. I had
endowed you both with good looks and talent; Dick with business ability,
and you with a gift for music. In order to cultivate these advantages,
which you had inherited from me, I refrained from going into any business
when your mother died. I was satisfied to share the small allowance her
father made you two children. I never complained. I said to myself, 'I
will invest my time in bringing up my children.' I thought it would turn
out the most profitable investment in the world,--I gave you children