sat down beside her and took one of her hands for a moment in both
of his. "But we are going to change that, if you'll let me," he said,
a smile lighting his serious face. "If you'll let me I'm going to be a
genuine sort of brother to you. I haven't the genius that Felix has,
I'll never create anything beautiful or wonderful, but I have got a
knack for business and I can make money. I don't care anything about
money for itself, but I do care a lot for all the things one can do
with it.

"My head is full of ideas and plans for using the money I shall make
as a lever for helping the world along. I know such things interest
you, Penelope. You like to read and think about them and I'm sure
you'd have done great work in that line if--if Felix--if there had
been no accident. And if you will give me the benefit of your reading
and thinking, it will help me in the working out of my plans."

"I? Could I be of any use? When I am such a prisoner and have so
little strength? I've only read and thought a little--I don't know
anything as people do who come face to face with actual conditions.
But you don't know," and a sharp, indrawn breath and the wistfulness
of her eyes told him how much she was moved by his proposal, "you
don't know what it would mean to me!"

"I can guess, Penelope--sister--you don't mind if I call you that? I
know a little, and your face tells me a good deal more, about how your
spirit has rebelled and how you have battled with it and won the
victory. You haven't found it easy to be a prisoner in a wheel-chair!"

"Indeed, I have not!"

She bent her thin, humped and crooked body forward with fresh energy
and a spark of the spirit she had conquered flashed out again in her
dark eyes and tired face.

"My soul has longed so to do something, to be something, to be able to
use my abilities and my energies as other people do! I have longed so
fiercely to go about and see the beautiful and wonderful things in the
world, to achieve something myself and to meet as an equal other
people who have done things worth while! If there is hell anywhere it
used to be in my heart! I fought it--it was the only thing there was
to do--by myself, for I couldn't add to mother's troubles such a
burden as that would have been. Father knew, a little, of how I felt,
before he died. But afterwards I fought it out myself--it took years
to do it--and at last forced myself into a sort of content, or
resignation.

"I know I am some comf