What did you suppose?"
"I don't ask anything for myself," she made answer,
with a note of resolution in her voice. "Of course if you
like to do things for the children, it won't be me who'll
stand in their light. They've been spoiled for my kind
of life as it is."
"I'll do things for everybody," he affirmed roundly.
"Let's see--how old is Alfred?"
"He'll be twenty in May--and Julia is fourteen months
older than he is."
"Gad!" was Thorpe's meditative comment. "How they shoot
up! Why I was thinking she was a little girl." "She never
will be tall, I'm afraid," said the literal mother.
"She favours her father's family. But Alfred is more
of a Thorpe. I'm sorry you missed seeing them last
summer--but of course they didn't stop long with me.
This was no place for them--and they had a good many
invitations to visit schoolfellows and friends in the country.
Alfred reminds me very much of what you were at his age:
he's got the same good opinion of himself, too--and he's
not a bit fonder of hard work."
"There's one mighty big difference between us, though,"
remarked Thorpe. "He won't start with his nose held
down to the grindstone by an old father hard as nails.
He'll start like a gentleman--the nephew of a rich man."
"I'm almost afraid to have such notions put in his head,"
she replied, with visible apprehension.
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