"Don't be angry. What was the good of making you unhappy before it was absolutely necessary; surely you know soon enough as it is?" "But I don't understand, Elizabeth; do you realize what this means to you and me?" "You mean that now you have no money you can't go to Cambridge?" "Yes, Cambridge, but above all the flat. I was thinking of our plans for our life together." "Go up and change and then we'll talk," said Elizabeth quietly. "You're wet through." Joan obeyed. 3 "And now," Elizabeth began, when Joan, wrapped in a dressing-gown, had sunk into a chair. "Let's thrash this thing out from clue to earring. How much has he left you?" "Twenty-five pounds a year each." Elizabeth considered. "It might be done," she said. "With care and scraping, I think it might be done, providing of course you take a scholarship, which you can do. You remember I told you that I could get a job in London? Well, I'm more sure of that now than I was when I wrote, I'm practically certain it can be managed. Don't interrupt, please. This is my plan: you will go to Cambridge when you're twenty-one and I shall take the flat. If it's available sooner we'll let it. While you're at Cambridge I shall find a P.G. That oughtn't to be difficult, and the little money that I've saved will go to help with Cambridge. Oh, don't argue, you can pay me back when you get into harness. And there's another thing I never told you; I have a relation from whom I must inherit something, a most disagreeable relation of my father's who can't help leaving me his little all, because it's entailed. Well, I propose to raise a loan on my expectations, 'borrowing on reversion' is what they call it, I think, and with that loan we're going to make a doctor of you, so you see it's all arranged." Joan stared at her, bewildered. "But, Elizabeth, I could never pay you back, perhaps." "Oh, well," said Elizabeth laughing; "then you'll have to work for me, you may even have to keep me in my old age." Joan began to cry, with the suddenness of a child; she cried openly, not troubling to hide her face. "Oh, for God's sake, Joan, don't do that!" "It's you," sobbed Joan, choking. "It's you--just _you_." Elizabeth got up, she hesitated and then went to the door, she did not look at Joan. "Think it over," she said. 4 Mrs. Ogden's hands fluttered helplessly over the litter of papers that lay among the plates on the half-cleared supper table; the eyes that she raised to Joan were vague. "Can you make all this out?" she said drearily. "I shall never be able to understand legal terms." Joan picked up a letter and read it through. "There's your small life interest under grandpapa Ogden's will, and then there'll be your pension, Mother, but it's very little, I'm afraid; we shall obviously have to leave this house."