"I'd sell them. For that matter, I might even take rooms in a hotel, and give up housekeeping altogether. It's too hard these days." "Why mama, you talk as if you had it all planned out! You know perfectly well you couldn't get along without me." "Oh, couldn't I! I'd like to know why not! Jeannette thinks more of my comfort this minute than you do." She folded the sheets of the paper into an untidy mass and slapped the crumpled whole down on the breakfast table. "You oughtn't to expect Jeannette to act as a sort of unpaid companion." "Companion! I'm not in my dotage yet. I don't need a companion, paid or unpaid. I don't need anybody for that matter. You're not so terribly important. Don't think it. I'd manage to live without you, very well." "Do you really mean that, mama?" At her tone Mrs. Payson stopped, one hand out-stretched toward the pantry door. "That I could get along without you? I certainly----" "That if I hadn't been here to run the electric and take you to market and shopping when you or Aunt Charlotte needed clothes, or hats, or corsets--you wouldn't have missed me? All these years?" "I'd have got along. So would your Aunt Charlotte. Nobody's so important that the world can't get along without them. I'd have managed." "I suppose you would," Lottie said, dully. "I suppose you would." Her mother passed into the kitchen. Aunt Charlotte, across the table, reached for the mangled newspaper and began to smooth it out sheet by sheet, and to fold it painstakingly into its original creasings. At the apprehensive look in her eyes Lottie smiled reassuringly, got up and came round to her. She patted the shrivelled cheek. "Don't look so disappointed in your maiden niece, Charlotte Thrift. She isn't as desperate as that. Don't think it." "Well, just for a minute----" there was relief in her voice--"I thought--but you've got some plan in your head?" "Yes." "Don't let anybody stop you then, whatever it is. Don't let anybody stop you. It's your last chance, Lottie." The pantry door swung open. "What's her last chance?" demanded Mrs. Payson, entering. She had a way of making timely--or untimely--entrances with the precision of a character in a badly written play. "Oh, nothing." Aunt Charlotte smiled and nodded coquettishly and her sister thought of Ben Gartz, as Aunt Charlotte had meant she should. Lottie knew this. At the knowledge a hot little flame of wrath swept over her.