There was nothing in me then--there is nothing now--which advised me of being inappropriately the object of such an address, or my replying to it as gallantly as the junior clerk of the Coöperative. To do Forester justice, he came out squarely on the question of my being entitled to the money if he was, but he contrived backhandedly to convey his sense of my obtuseness in not deferring sentimentally to a male ascendancy that I did not intrinsically feel; and I can go back now to these disquieting episodes as the beginning of that maladjustment of my earlier years, in not having a man about toward whom I could actually experience the deference I was expected to exhibit. Well, I had my check for the same amount and on the same occasion as my brother's, but the feeling in the air of its being merely a concession to my forwardness, prevented me from making any return for it that interfered with Forester's carrying off the situation of coming into his father's legacy on coming of age, quite to my mother's satisfaction. What it might have made for graciousness for once in my life to have been the centre of that dramatic affectionateness, I can only guess. Firm in the determination that since no sentiment went to its bestowal none should go to its acknowledgment, I carried my check upstairs and shook all of the rugs out of the window to account for my eyes being red at ten o'clock in the morning. And that was the way the Powers took to provide against the complete submergence of the actress in the young lady, for though it turned out that I did spend the greater part of the money on my wedding clothes, a portion of it went for the only technical training I ever had. The real business of a young lady in Taylorville was getting married, but to avoid an obviousness in the interim, she played the piano or painted on satin or became interested in missions. If my money had fallen in eight months earlier I should undoubtedly have spent it on the third year at Montecito; as it was I decided to study elocution. It appeared a wholly fortuitous choice. I was not supposed to have any talent for it, but I burned to spend some of my money sensibly, and it was admittedly sensible for a young lady to take lessons in something. Effie was having music, Flora Haines painted plaques; when Olivia joined Professor Winter's elocution classes at Temperance Hall mother said it looked like throwing money away, but of course I could teach in case anything happened, which meant in case of my not being married or being left a widow with young children.