"Yes, kind friend, just one thing," said Marjory. "You promised me that when we met again you would tell me your name."
The little woman melted away instantly, but somewhere out of the shadows came a small sweet sighing voice, which said softly, "My name is--Genius!"
Jewels to Wear
"Torches are made to burn;
jewels to wear."--Shakespeare
CHAPTER I
"I can't think, Nancy, why you cannot get something useful to occupy yourself with. It seems to me that I have slaved and sacrificed myself all my life, in every possible direction, simply that you may waste your whole time spoiling good paper, scribbling, scribbling, scribbling, from morning till night, with your fingers inky, and your thoughts in the clouds, and your attention on nothing that I want you to attend to. I don't call it a good reward to make to me. You will never do any good with that ridiculous scribbling--never! When I think of what you might save me, of how you might spare me in my anxious and busy life, it makes me positively ill to think I am your mother. Here have I been thinking of you, Nancy, and working for you, and struggling, and fighting, and slaving for you for twenty years, and now that the time has come when you might do something for me, you have only one idea in your head, and that is writing rubbishy stories that nobody will ever want to buy!"
"You have only one idea in your head, and that is writing rubbishy stories that nobody will ever want to buy!"
The girl thus addressed turned and looked at her mother.
"Mother, dear," she said depreciatingly, "I am sorry that I am not more useful. I can't help it. I do think of you, I try to do everything I can to relieve you, and help you; but these stories will come into my head. They won't be put out of it. What am I to do?"