"Chance for what?" asked Kate tersely.
"Education, travel, leisure, every opportunity in the world,"
enumerated Nancy Ellen.
Kate was handling her gloves, her forehead wrinkled, her eyes
narrowed in concentration.
"That is one side of it," she said. "The other is that neither my
children nor I have in our blood, breeding, or mental cosmos, the
background that it takes to make one happy with money in unlimited
quantities. So far as I'm concerned personally, I'm happier this
minute as I am, than John Jardine's money ever could make me. I
had a fierce struggle with that question long ago; since I have
had nearly eight years of life I love, that is good for my soul,
the struggle to leave it would be greater now. Polly would be
happier and get more from life as the wife of big gangling Henry
Peters, than she would as a millionaire's daughter. She'd be very
suitable in a farmhouse parlour; she'd be a ridiculous little
figure at a ball. As for Adam, he'd turn this down quick and
hard."
"Just you try him!" cried Nancy Ellen.
"For one thing, he won't be here at ten o'clock," said Kate, "and
for another, since it involves my becoming the wife of John
Jardine, it isn't for Adam to decide. This decision is strictly
my own. I merely mention the children, because if I married him,
it would have an inevitable influence on their lives, an influence
that I don't in the least covet either for them or for myself.
Nancy Ellen, can't you remotely conceive of such a thing as one
human being in the world who is SATISFIED THAT HE HAS HIS SHARE,
and who believes to the depths of his soul that no man should be
allowed to amass, and to use for his personal indulgence, the
amount of money that John Jardine does?"
"Yes, I can," cried Nancy Ellen, "when I see you, and the way you
act! You have chance after chance, but you seem to think that
life requires of you a steady job of holding your nose to the
grindstone. It was rather stubby to begin with, go on and grind
it clear off your face, if you like."
"All right," said Kate. "Then I'll tell you definitely that I
have no particular desire to marry anybody; I like my life
immensely as I'm living it. I'm free, independent, and my
children are in the element to which they were born, and where
they can live naturally, and spend their lives helping in the
great work of feeding, clothing, and housing their fellow men.
I've no desire to leave my job or take them from theirs, to start
a lazy, shiftless life of self-indulgence. I don't meddle much
with the Bible, but I have a profound BELIEF in it, and a large
RESPECT for it, as the greatest book in the world, and it says:
'By the sweat of his brow shall man earn his bread,' or words to
that effect. I was born a sweater, I shall just go on sweating
until I die; I refuse to begin perspiring at my time of life."