sacrifice.”
“Don't you think,” said Sidney bravely, “that you are a poor person to talk of sacrifice? Haven't you always, all your life—”
Dr. Ed colored to the roots of his straw-colored hair.
“Certainly not,” he said almost irritably. “Max had genius; I had—ability. That's different. One real success is better than two halves. Not”—he smiled down at her—“not that I minimize my usefulness. Somebody has to do the hack-work, and, if I do say it myself, I'm a pretty good hack.”
“Very well,” said Sidney. “Then I shall be a hack, too. Of course, I had thought of other things,—my father wanted me to go to college,—but I'm strong and willing. And one thing I must make up my mind to, Dr. Ed; I shall have to support my mother.”
Harriet passed the door on her way in to a belated supper. The man in the parlor had a momentary glimpse of her slender, sagging shoulders, her thin face, her undisguised middle age.
“Yes,” he said, when she was out of hearing. “It's hard, but I dare say it's right enough, too. Your aunt ought to have her chance. Only—I wish it didn't have to be.”
Sidney, left alone, stood in the little parlor beside the roses. She touched them tenderly, absently. Life, which the day before had called her with the beckoning finger of dreams, now reached out grim insistent hands. Life—in the raw.
CHAPTER III
K. Le Moyne had wakened early that first morning in his new quarters. When he sat up and yawned, it was to see his worn cravat disappearing with vigorous tugs under the bureau. He rescued it, gently but firmly.
“You and I, Reginald,” he apostrophized the bureau, “will have to come to an understanding. What I leave on the floor you may have, but what blows down is not to be touched.”
Because he was young and very strong, he wakened to a certain lightness of spirit. The morning sun had always called him to a new day, and the sun was shining. But he grew depressed as he prepared for the office. He told himself savagely, as he put on his shabby clothing, that,
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