After she had finished neither of them said anything for a moment or two. Then Rosemary, overcoming a sudden unusual shyness, put her hand on Mary's arm.
"Mother, father says you think you feel we're taking too much money from the business. Tony and I think so, too; I mean, we'll willingly take less allowance than father has offered us, if it'll make things any easier for you." Her glowing face, upturned, wore a look of passionate sincerity. "It's so splendid of you, mother—don't think me horrid—you know that anyhow I couldn't love you more than I do, but it is so—so jolly to feel we're on the same side." She dropped her eyes hastily.
An impulse surged through Mary to stoop and take the child in her arms, to press her cheek against her daughter's cheek, to tell her, now that she could, what a world of unsatisfied love had been satisfied by her words. But she was afraid of Rosemary's shyness, of her own shyness, she was afraid of this Tony who might ask what "your mother" had said, and how she had taken it. The impulse was checked—she could find no words detached or restrained enough, and when she did speak she only brought out a little absurd denial.
"My darling, I'm afraid I'm still a conservative old thing, you young socialists are too revolutionary for me, but I certainly do feel that something must be done."
She paused, and Rosemary, with a gleam in the eyes her mother thought so beautiful, broke in on her. "Don't talk like father, mother, you're not an old thing, you're young and you're brave, and you're a darling!" She came closer and laid her head against her mother's knee.
Mary could say nothing, but her hand trembled with tenderness as she laid it on her daughter's hair.
Rosemary spoke first. It was pleasant to her to find herself in such intimate, such affectionate accord with her mother, but she was not accustomed to accept or enjoy an emotional state without analysis and a following out of its implications.
"I don't suppose we should agree about the exact thing that ought to be done," she began presently, "but after all it isn't that that matters. Tony says I'm hopelessly dogmatic, and I do feel that I know the best thing to do, and I can't really see why other people shouldn't agree with me. Of course I know I've got to refrain from trying to make them, but still"—she sighed, and arranged herself more comfortably on the stool—"I can't help feeling I'm right and they're wrong. But after all, I tell myself, it's the feeling that's important. If enough people want to alter a thing badly enough it will be altered in the long run." She ended on a somewhat doubtful note.
"What is it you want me to do, little daughter?" Mary smoothed back a tress of fine brown hair as she spoke.
The light touch on her forehead seemed to soften Rosemary's desire to impose her conclusions on the world. "Honestly, mother," she said after a moment's thought, "I don't want you to do anything. I want lots of people to give money for starting a waitresses' union, but I want you to do what you feel you ought to do. You see, I didn't suggest the whole thing to father simply because I wanted you to be free, to see for yourself and trust yourself—do you mind my talking like this?" She broke off suddenly.