But I couldn't help making a sort of grievance of it, too. In
all these years I've always made mother afraid of me--always made her
feel that I was, somehow, contemptuous of her work and ideas. That's
rather a strong way of putting it, perhaps. But I've seen her trying to
hide her enthusiasms from me a little, because of my nasty way of
sticking pins in them.
"Oh, of course in a way I was making the enthusiasms possible--I knew
that. She never could have gone on as she did if she'd been nagged at
all the time for money. Big ideas are always more important to her than
small facts, but without some narrow-minded, literal person to look
after the facts her ideas wouldn't have had much chance. I grubbed away
until I got things straightened out, so that her income was enough
to live on--enough for her to live on. I'd pulled her through. But
then ..."
"But then there was me," said Rose.
"I thought I was going to let you go," Portia went on inflexibly. "You'd
got to be just the age I was when I went to work, and I said there was
no reason why you shouldn't come in for your share.
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