"But I am ashamed," moaned Miss Maggie, her face still averted. "And I can't think why I should have been so—so wild. It was just something that you said—about my rights, I think. You see—all my life I've just HAD to learn to say 'It doesn't matter,' when there were so many things I wanted to do, and couldn't. And—don't you see?—I found out, after a while, that it didn't really matter, half so much—college and my own little wants and wishes as that I should do—what I had to do, willingly and pleasantly at home."

"But, good Heavens, how could you keep from tearing 'round and throwing things?"

"I couldn't—all the time. I—I smashed a bowl once, and two cups." She laughed shamefacedly, and met his eyes now. "But I soon found— that it didn't make me or anybody else—any happier, and that it didn't help things at all. So I tried—to do the other way. And now, please, PLEASE say you'll forget all this—what I've been saying. Indeed, Mr. Smith I am very much ashamed."

"Forget it!" Mr. Smith turned on his heel and marched up and down the room again. "Confound that man!"

"What man?"

"Mr. Stanley G. Fulton, if you must know, for not giving you any of that money."

"Money, money, money!" Miss Maggie threw out both her hands with a gesture of repulsion. "If I've heard that word once, I've heard it a hundred times in the last week. Sometimes I wish I might never hear it again."

"You don't want to be deaf, do you? Well, you'd have to be, to escape hearing that word."

"I suppose so. But—" again she threw out her hands.

"You don't mean—" Mr. Smith was regarding her with curious interest. "Don't you WANT—money, really?"

She hesitated; then she sighed.

"Oh, yes, of course. We all want money. We have to have money, too; but I don't think it's—everything in the world, by any means."

"You don't think it brings happiness, then?"

"Sometimes. Sometimes not."

"Most of—er—us would be willing to take the risk."

"Most of us would."

"Now, in the case of the Blaisdells here—don't you think this money is going to bring happiness to them?"

There was no answer. Miss Maggie seemed to be thinking.

"Miss Maggie," exclaimed Mr. Smith, with a concern all out of proportion to his supposed interest in the matter, "you don't mean to say you DON'T think this money is going to bring them happiness!"

Miss Maggie laughed a little.

"Oh, no! This money'll bring them happiness all right, of course,— particularly to some of them. But I was just wondering; if you don't know how to spend five dollars so as to get the most out of it, how will you spend five hundred, or five hundred thousand—and get the most out of that?"

"What do you mean?"