"A nice boy, though a fool. I hoped you would notice that. You'll be dazzled by my virtues before you're through with me." He went on conversationally: "The reason I've never offered to be a brother to any girl before is that I've got a perfectly good sister of my own. Her one fault is that she's always bossed me. I warn you from the start of our relations that I'm going to be the boss. It will be the first time I've ever bossed any one, and I'm looking forward to it a lot." The faintest suggestion of a smile touched her short upper lip. Above it, her red-brown eyes had softened again. She drew a deep breath. "It's strange," she said. "You've let me in for all sorts of things you don't realize. And yet, somehow, I feel, for the time at least, as if I had been lying under the weight of the world and some one had lifted the wretched thing off me." "Can't you, by a supreme effort of the imagination, fancy that I lifted it off?" suggested Laurie, mildly. This time she really smiled. "I can," she conceded. "And without any effort at all," she added somberly, "I can fancy us both under it again." He shook his head. "That won't do!" he declared. "The lid is off. You've just admitted it. You feel better for having it off. So do I. As your big brother, and self-appointed counselor, I choose this opportunity to tell you what you're going to do." She pursed her lips at him. It was the gesture of a rebellious child. Her entire manner had changed so suddenly that Laurie felt a bewilderment almost equal to his satisfaction in it. For the first time throughout the interview he experienced the thrill she had given him in the mirror. "Yes?" she prompted. "In the first place--" He hesitated. The ground that stretched between them now was firmer, but still uncertain. One false step might lose him much of what he had gained. "There's the question of your future," he went on, in a brisk, matter-of-fact tone. "I spent two months last year looking for a job in New York. I was about down to my last cent before I found it. It occurred to me that, perhaps, you--" He was beginning to flounder. "That I am out of work?" she finished, calmly. "You are right." Laurie beamed at her. Surely his way was clear now! "I had a streak of luck last year," he resumed. "I collaborated on a play that people were foolish enough to like. Ever since that, money has poured in on me in the most vulgar way. I clink when I walk. Dollars ooze from my pockets when I make a gesture. Last week, at the bank, the cashier begged me to take some of my money away and do something with it. He said it was burdening the institution. So, as your adopted brother, I'm going to start a bank-account for you," he ended, simply. "Indeed you are not!" "Indeed I am!" "I agreed to live. I did not agree to--what is it you Americans say?--to sponge!" He ignored all but one phrase of the reply. "What do you mean by that?" he demanded with quickened interest. "Aren't you an American?"