n not going on and being a
lawyer--and all that?"

"Oh, perhaps," said Portia indifferently. "I wouldn't worry about that,
though. Because really, child, you had no more chance of growing up to
be a lawyer and a leader of the 'Cause' than I have of getting to be a
brigadier-general."

Rose stopped brushing her hair and demanded to be told why not. She had
been getting on all right up to now, hadn't she?

"Why, just think," said Portia, "what mother herself had gone through
when she was your age; put herself through college because her father
didn't believe in 'higher education'--practically disowned her. She'd
taught six months in that awful school--remember?--she was used to being
abused and ridiculed. And she was working hard enough to have killed a
camel. But you!... Why, Lamb, you've never really _had_ to do anything
in your life. If you felt like it, all right--and equally all right if
you didn't. You've never been hurt--never even been frightened. You
wouldn't know what they felt like. And the result is ..."

Portia drew in a long puff, then eyed her cigarette thoughtfully through
the slowly expelled smoke. "The result is," she concluded, "that you
have grown up into a big, splendid, fearless, confiding creature that
it's perfectly inevitable some man like Rodney Aldrich would go straight
out of his head about. And there you are."

A troubled questioning look came into the younger sister's eyes. "I've
been lazy and selfish, I know," she said. "Perhaps more than I thought.
I haven't meant to be. But ... Do you think I'm any good at all?"

"That's the real injustice of it," said Portia; "that you are. You've
stayed big and simple. It couldn't possibly occur to you now to say to
yourself, 'Poor old Portia! She's always been jealous because mother
liked me best, and now she's just green with envy because I'm going to
marry Rodney Aldrich.'"

She wouldn't stop to hear Rose's protest. "I know it couldn't," she went
on. "That's what I say. And yet there's more than a little truth in it,
I suppose. Oh, I don't mean I'm sorry you're going to be happy--I
believe you are, you know. I'm just a little sorry for myself. Curious,
anyway, to see where I've missed all the big important things you've
kept. I've been afraid of my instincts, I suppose. Never able to take a
leap because I've always stopped to look, first. I'm too narrow between
the cheek-bones, perhaps. Anyhow, here I stay, grinding along, wondering
what it's