"Sidney."

"Yes, Aunt Harriet."

"Will you come in, please?"

Katie took the iron from her.

"You go. She's all dressed up, and she doesn't want any coffee."

So Sidney went in. It was to her that Harriet made her speech:-"Sidney, when your father died, I promised to look after both you and your

mother until you were able to take care of yourself. That was five years

ago. Of course, even before that I had helped to support you."

"If you would only have your coffee, Harriet!"

Mrs. Page sat with her hand on the handle of the old silver-plated

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coffee-pot. Harriet ignored her.

"You are a young woman now. You have health and energy, and you have

youth, which I haven't. I'm past forty. In the next twenty years, at the

outside, I've got not only to support myself, but to save something to keep

me after that, if I live. I'll probably live to be ninety. I don't want

to live forever, but I've always played in hard luck."

Sidney returned her gaze steadily.

"I see. Well, Aunt Harriet, you're quite right. You've been a saint to

us, but if you want to go away--"

"Harriet!" wailed Mrs. Page, "you're not thinking--"

"Please, mother."

Harriet's eyes softened as she looked at the girl "We can manage," said Sidney quietly. "We'll miss you, but it's time we

learned to depend on ourselves."

After that, in a torrent, came Harriet's declaration of independence. And,

mixed in with its pathetic jumble of recriminations, hostility to her

sister's dead husband, and resentment for her lost years, came poor

Harriet's hopes and ambitions, the tragic plea of a woman who must

substitute for the optimism and energy of youth the grim determination of

middle age.

"I can do good work," she finished. "I'm full of ideas, if I could get a

chance to work them out. But there's no chance here. There isn't a woman

on the Street who knows real clothes when she sees them. They don't even

know how to wear their corsets. They send me bundles of hideous stuff,

with needles and shields and imitation silk for lining, and when I turn out

something worth while out of the mess they think the dress is queer!"

Mrs. Page could not get back of Harriet's revolt to its cause. To her,

Harriet was not an artist pleading for her art; she was a sister and a

bread-winner deserting her trust.




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