“It was the first I ever knew about anything like that.  I knew we weren’t rich, of course—­I never had quite enough pocket money.  But the idea of an old unpaid grocery bill made me sick.  I talked things over with mother the next day—­told her I wasn’t going to college—­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 way—­at least I couldn’t make up my mind to make them—­so you went to the university.  I paid for that, and I paid for your trousseau, and then I was through.”

Rose was trembling, but she didn’t flinch.  “Wh—­what was it,” she asked quietly, “what was it that might have been different and wasn’t?  Was it—­was it somebody you wanted to marry—­that you gave up so I could have my chance?”