"Yes, I know. But in the first place, you see, I couldn't very well be spared from the house. I do every bit of the work, except cooking and washing, and mother doesn't expect ever to touch the housekeeping any more. It takes so much time, and worry, and our cook is _awful_, because we can't afford to pay but twelve dollars a month, and, of course, a good servant won't work for that! And besides, father wouldn't dream of allowing such a thing, Cousin Mary. He'd think it was--was just charging him with being a failure, and not able to take care of his family!" It was a sufficiently conclusive statement, as Cousin Mary seemed to feel; she did not argue back, but replied understandingly, and mentioned that Harold Warder felt the same way about women's working. So Angela felt the moment to be favorable for explaining her deeper points of view. "And, Cousin Mary, even if I made mother take back the housework, and father'd let me do it," she said, with a girlish hesitancy that became her well, "I wouldn't _want_ to go into an office--or have a business career. I--just feel differently about all those things. I have no ambitions that way--at _all_!" Cousin Mary, who chanced to be standing near, surprised her by stooping suddenly and pinching her cheek. "Tell me what your ambitions are, Angela, dear." "Well--you probably--I don't believe you'd understand exactly what I--" "On the contrary, for two cents I'll tell you what they are myself." "Well, what?" said Angela, gazing up with unfeigned interest. "Tell me what you think?" "They really can be stated as one, my guess is," said Mary, smiling in the nicest way: "To be a good wife to the man you will love some day." Color flowed suddenly into the girl's upturned face. By a strange coincidence, Cousin Mary had stated the ambition in the very words Angela herself would have used. But, though maidenly embarrassed, she would not lower her gaze as if she were ashamed of her ambition, or overborne by her cousin's hard masculinity. "I know," she said, pink and sweet, "you think that's just a--weak womanly ambition! I know you aren't much interested in my kind of things, Cousin Mary." "Indeed, you wrong me," said Mary, her smile dying. "I don't feel that way at all." And through her shot the irrelevant thought: "Why does she call me Cousin Mary, all the time? I'm only four years older than she."