doing?" He was nettled, and showed it.
"I am old enough to make a choice for myself."

She paid no heed to this disclaimer. "They are perfectly ruthless,"
she went on.

"Who are ruthless?"

"Father and John. They would compass heaven and earth to make one
proselyte; and the strange thing to me is that John at least does it
in a cold mechanical way, almost as if his own mind stood outside of
the process. Father is set on his inheriting Wroote and Epworth
cures, John on saving his own soul; let them come to terms or fight
it out between them. But how can it profit Epworth or John's soul
that they should condemn _you_, as they have condemned mother and all
of us, to hopeless poverty? What end have they in view? Or have
they any? For what service, pray, are you held in reserve?"
She paused. "Somehow I think they will not wholly succeed, even
though they have done this thing between them. You will fall on your
feet; your face is one the world will make friends with. You may
serve their purpose, but something of you--your worldly happiness,
belike--will slip and escape from the millstones which have ground
the rest of us to powder."

She picked up the kettle again and turned her back upon him while she
filled the tea-pot at the small table. For the first time in their
talks she had spoken bitterly.

"Nevertheless, I assure you, I refused of my own free will."

"Is there such a thing as free will in our family? I never detected
it. As babes we were yoked to the chariot to drag Jack's soul up to
the doors of salvation. I only rebelled, and--Charles, I am sorry,
but not all penitent."

He ignored these last words. "You are quoting from Molly, I think.
She and Jack seldom agree."

"Because, dear soul, she reads that Jack despises while he uses her.
He looks upon her as the weak one in the team; he doubts she may
break down on the road, and she, too, looks forward to it, though not
with any fear."

"For some reason, father allows her to talk to him as no one else
does--not even mother. Do you know that one day last summer father
and I were discussing Jack and the chance of his ever settling at
Epworth; for this is in the old man's thoughts now, almost day and
night. We were in the study by the window, and Molly at the table
making a fair copy of the morning's work on Job; we did not think she
heard us. All of a sudden she looked up and quoted 'Doth the hawk
fly by _thy_ wisdom and stretch her wings