u
said that your nieces are not in want. You meant, of course, that they
had food and clothes and shelter. If they were girls who lived in an
absolutely different plane of life that would be sufficient for their
happiness. They could have pleasure with their two dresses and their
one best bonnet, because everyone else of their class would have no
more. But take one of them out of that class; put her where her only
companions would have to be sought for among men and women who lived on
a scale of comparative wealth, where, to make friends, she would have
to appear well, and so on--then, what in the first case was at least a
sufficiency, now becomes tragically inadequate. There is no cure but
for that girl to recede from the class to which by birth, breeding and
instinct she belongs.

"You have built up a great fortune. You yourself are what you boast of
being--a self-made man--a man originally of the people. But you made
your nephew a gentleman--understand that I am using the word in the
commonest sense. Consequently his children belong to a class in which
needs must be measured by a different scale from that used for working
women. They live--as you do, and most likely because you do--in a very
rich community. They suffer from wants that girls of a different class
would never know. They are deprived of things which your working girl
would not be deprived of. They are poorer on their two thousand a
year, or whatever it is, than a peasant woman would be on two hundred,
because their particular needs are more expensive."

"They will be very rich--after I die," said Mr. Prescott in a low
voice, after a short pause. "But I won't let them even suspect it.
That little wife of George's--I never want to see her again--she is a
great little gambler. If she felt sure that in a few years her
daughters were coming into a fortune of several millions, Heaven only
knows but that she'd have the last cent of it spent in advance. You
seem to have gleaned an immense amount of information concerning my
nieces--perhaps you know what her plans for them are."

"You know, Tom, that I was as much opposed--indeed more opposed,
perhaps, than you were to George's marrying Lallie. But that is
neither here nor there now. I am afraid that she is--well, attempting
things for her girls that lie beyond her income. You must not blame
her. She isn't a wise woman, but I am sure that she is one who suffers
more for her mistakes than she