"And, Cousin Mary, even if I made mother take back the housework, and father'd let me do it," she said, with a girlish hesitancy that became her well, "I wouldn't want to go into an office—or have a business career. I—just feel differently about all those things. I have no ambitions that way—at all!"
Cousin Mary, who chanced to be standing near, surprised her by stooping suddenly and pinching her cheek.
"Tell me what your ambitions are, Angela, dear."
"Well—you probably—I don't believe you'd understand exactly what I—"
"On the contrary, for two cents I'll tell you what they are myself."
"Well, what?" said Angela, gazing up with unfeigned interest. "Tell me what you think?"
"They really can be stated as one, my guess is," said Mary, smiling in the nicest way: "To be a good wife to the man you will love some day."
Color flowed suddenly into the girl's upturned face. By a strange coincidence, Cousin Mary had stated the ambition in the very words Angela herself would have used. But, though maidenly embarrassed, she would not lower her gaze as if she were ashamed of her ambition, or overborne by her cousin's hard masculinity.
"I know," she said, pink and sweet, "you think that's just a—weak womanly ambition! I know you aren't much interested in my kind of things, Cousin Mary."
"Indeed, you wrong me," said Mary, her smile dying. "I don't feel that way at all."