"Sidney."
"Yes, Aunt Harriet."
"Will you come in, please?"
Katie took the iron from her.
"You go. She's all dressed up, and she doesn't want any coffee."
So Sidney went in. It was to her that Harriet made her speech:-"Sidney, when your father died, I promised to look after both you and your
mother until you were able to take care of yourself. That was five years
ago. Of course, even before that I had helped to support you."
"If you would only have your coffee, Harriet!"
Mrs. Page sat with her hand on the handle of the old silver-plated
coffee-pot. Harriet ignored her.
"You are a young woman now. You have health and energy, and you have
youth, which I haven't. I'm past forty. In the next twenty years, at the
outside, I've got not only to support myself, but to save something to keep
me after that, if I live. I'll probably live to be ninety. I don't want
to live forever, but I've always played in hard luck."
Sidney returned her gaze steadily.
"I see. Well, Aunt Harriet, you're quite right. You've been a saint to
us, but if you want to go away--"
"Harriet!" wailed Mrs. Page, "you're not thinking--"
"Please, mother."
Harriet's eyes softened as she looked at the girl "We can manage," said Sidney quietly. "We'll miss you, but it's time we
learned to depend on ourselves."
After that, in a torrent, came Harriet's declaration of independence. And,
mixed in with its pathetic jumble of recriminations, hostility to her
sister's dead husband, and resentment for her lost years, came poor
Harriet's hopes and ambitions, the tragic plea of a woman who must
substitute for the optimism and energy of youth the grim determination of
middle age.
"I can do good work," she finished. "I'm full of ideas, if I could get a
chance to work them out. But there's no chance here. There isn't a woman
on the Street who knows real clothes when she sees them. They don't even
know how to wear their corsets. They send me bundles of hideous stuff,
with needles and shields and imitation silk for lining, and when I turn out
something worth while out of the mess they think the dress is queer!"
Mrs. Page could not get back of Harriet's revolt to its cause. To her,
Harriet was not an artist pleading for her art; she was a sister and a
bread-winner deserting her trust.