chain about her neck, "which I saved and saved so for? Haven't I any income? Haven't I a cent that's mine, Tom?"
"Not a red cent, Ruth—just some papers that we might as well put into the fire-place and burn up."
"Oh," she burst forth, "how unfair—how cruel and unfair!"
"There's gratitude for you," threw in Edith.
"To bring me up," went on Ruth, "under a delusion. To let me go on, year after year, thinking I was provided for, and then suddenly, when it pleases you, to tell me that I'm an absolute dependent, a creature of charity. Oh, how cruel that is! You tell me I ought to be grateful. Well, I'm not—I'm not grateful. You've been false with me. You've brought me up useless and helpless. I'm too old now to develop whatever talent I may have had. I can only drudge now. What is there I can do now? Nothing—nothing—except scrub floors or something like that."
"Oh, yes, there is, too," said Edith. "You can marry Robert Jennings and be sensible."
"Marry a man for support, whether I want to or not? I'll die first. You all want me to marry him," she burst out at us fiercely, "but I shan't—I shan't. I'm strong and healthy, and I'm just beginning to discover that I've got some brains, too. There's something I can do, surely, some way I can earn money. I shan't go West with you, Tom. Understand that. I can't quite see myself growing old in all your various households—old and useless and dependent like lots
