"
"You know well enough where your chance is. With your looks, in comic
opera--"
The girl frowns, and speaks for the first time with some impatience: "And
you know well enough my determination about that. The one week's
experience I had--"
"Oh, nonsense!" interrupted the man. "All managers are not like that
fellow. There are plenty of good, gentle young women on the comic opera
stage."
"No doubt there are. But the atmosphere was not to my taste. If I
absolutely had to endure it, of course I could. But we are not put to
that necessity."
"Necessity! Good Heaven, don't we live poorly enough?"
"We live comfortably enough. As long as Dick insists on making us our
present allowance--"
"Insists? I should think he would insist! As if my own son, whom I
brought up and started in life, shouldn't provide for his old father to
the full extent of his ability!"
"All the same, it's a far greater allowance than most sons or brothers
make."
"Because other sons are ungrateful, and blind to their duty, it doesn't
follow that Dick ought to be. Thank Heaven, I brought him up better than
that. I'm only sorry that his sister can't see things in the same light
as he does. After all the trouble of raising my children, and the hopes
I've built on them--"
"But you know perfectly well," she protests, softly, "that Dick makes us
such a liberal allowance in order that I needn't go out and earn money.
He has often said that. Even when you praise him for his dutifulness to
you, he says it's not that, but his love for me.
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