"But you shouldn't take advantage, Miss Theresa." "It is rather mean, isn't it?" she said thoughtfully; "but, you know, Bessie, I have a hunger that's never satisfied." "If it's for something 'olesome----" "But it isn't. It's just to be made a fuss of." "And there's your father thinking of you day and night." "Yes, there's Father." She had been neglecting him of late; she had allowed him to come home without a single question about his visit to the farm, and now, repentant, she ran upstairs to his little room. "How dare you sit here without a fire?" she asked. "I'm wearing my overcoat, my dear." "Come downstairs at once!" "I'm afraid your Uncle George is in the dining-room. I can work better alone." She knelt and put a match to the wood and paper. "We can't afford it, Theresa." "I can, though. What are you working at?" "I've begun again. It's foolish, no doubt--a waste of time, but the old impulse returns. Though now there is no one who cares for it." "There's me." She was kneeling by the growing fire, and she could only see her father's back, but its stillness and his silence were a punishment for all the kindnesses she had left undone, and for an instant she knew how she would feel when he lay dead. Gripping the fender, she dropped her head to her knees. "And there's Alexander," she said, in a voice muffled against her dress. There was a pause. "Yes, there's Alexander." "Did you have a happy time," she stopped, and deliberately she used Alexander's words, "up yonder." "Very. Very. He was like himself again. And, I hope you won't mind, Theresa, he wants to come here for his Easter holiday. I didn't ask him--I wouldn't do that without your consent. He asked himself. I could only make one answer, could I, my dear?" "No. No. I don't mind at all. Why should I?" He turned in his chair. "You seemed to have such an extraordinary dislike for him, my child." On her knees she crossed the narrow space between them, and leaned her head against his arm. "I've always hated to hear other people praised, and that was the way you began about him, fourteen years ago. Fourteen years! And you've been praising him ever since. But I'm trying to be more sensible. At least, I'm different. At least, I think I am! Oh--I don't know! Anyhow, I don't mind his coming a bit, a bit! He can live here if he likes!" She sank to a sitting posture, and she beat the ground softly, hurriedly, with her fists. "He won't want to do that," Edward Webb said unnecessarily. "He seems wedded to his life there." "I thought he was in love." Her voice scorned the state in him. "So Janet seemed to think. I have heard no more of it. And he seems content." "Contented people," she snapped, "have fat souls." "I didn't say self-content, my dear," he explained mildly. "But he is willing to live a life of obscurity--for the sake of an ideal. That's rather great, Theresa. With his scholarship and his power he might have made himself a name."