"I don't deny anything that means I spend a lot of money. I have more sense. The facts are there." "You've already broken into your capital, haven't you?" "Did Hattie tell you that or did you guess? It's true, I have; but--" she tried to place the harm done in a harmless light--"it isn't so bad but that if I saved for a little while I could make it up again." "If! True; but are you going to, Nell? That's the question." "Oh, Tom, I never ought to have been given any money if I was to hold on to it!" Aurora almost groaned. "I didn't know at first. I was pleased as Punch. I lay awake nights just to gloat and feel grand. I tell _you_, I meant to hold on to it! I tell _you_, it wasn't going to get away from me after that good fight we made for it! But--" the effect of a mental groan was repeated--"the whole thing isn't as I thought it would be, not a bit." She stopped, and while she tried to coordinate her ideas, Dr. Tom quietly waited for explanation or illustration of her meaning. "I don't like money, there's the whole of it!" she gave him the sum of her attempt in one cast. Dr. Tom continued to wait, smoking. "In fact, I hate it." Dr. Tom continued to wait, without interrupting, or trying to help her disentangle her thought, of which he had in truth no inkling. "I hate it, and I love it, both. That's truer, I suppose. But I can't be at rest with it." "Never fear, girl,"--his tone was humorous,--"you'll get used to it. Just from watching you, I should have fancied you were pretty well used to it already." "When I was a child it was just the same way with candy," she went on with her own train of thought, not minding his; "I loved it--and gobbled it right up. Some of the girls made theirs last and last. I ate mine at once. And it wasn't only because I was a pig with no self-control. I wanted to have done with it and go back to a sensible life. With this money I have the same feeling--and then another feeling that I sort of can't account for, as if I wanted to get rid of it because there was something wrong in me having it." "That money? You sure earned it!" he came out vigorously. "Don't be a goose, Nell."