h
a very comfortable little ark for you now, and I'd be glad to have you
stay in it always. I didn't interfere when you first announced your
intention of starting out to seek your fortune, because I knew you'd
never be satisfied to settle down in this quiet mining camp until you'd
tried something different. But now the question of your staying here
seems to have been settled for you, there's no use letting the
disappointment down you so completely. What's your big brother for if
not to take care of you?"

"Oh, Jack! You're an old darling!" she cried, with tears in her eyes.
"It's dear of you to put it that way, and I do appreciate it even if I
don't seem to. But--there's something inside of me that just won't let
me settle down to be taken care of by my family. I have my own place to
make in the world. I have my own life to live!"

She saw his amused, indulgent smile and cried out indignantly, "Well,
you'd scorn a _boy_ who'd be satisfied with that kind of life. Just
because I'm a girl is no reason that I should be dependent on you the
rest of my days. You wouldn't want Norman to."

"No," admitted Jack, "but that is different. I should think you could
understand how a fellow feels about his little sister when he's the head
of the family. He regards her as one of his first responsibilities, to
look out for her and take care of her."

Mary straightened up in her chair and looked at him with a perplexed
expression, saying in a slow, puzzled way, "Jack, it makes me almost
cross-eyed trying to see your way and my way at the same time. Your way
is so dear and sweet and generous that I feel like a dog to say a word
against it, and yet--_please_ don't get mad--it _is_ an old-fashioned
way. Nowadays girls don't want to be kept at home on a shelf like a
piece of fragile china. When they're well and strong and capable of
taking care of themselves they want a chance to strike out and realize
their ambitions just as a boy would. Joyce did it, and look what she's
doing for herself and how happy she is."

"Yes," he admitted. "Her work is her very life, and her success in it
means just as much to her as mine here at the mines does to me. But I
can't see what particular ambition you'd be realizing in filling any of
the positions you've applied for. You couldn't do more than drudge along
and make a bare living at first. There'd be very little time and energy
left for ambitions."

"Well, I'd be satisfying one of them at any rate,"