"How has it been against you?"
"I owned a mining claim in California—it didn't pay anything—and I sold it for ten dollars. The man I sold it to kept working till he struck a vein. He cleared ten thousand dollars."
"As you might have done if you hadn't despaired too quickly."
"Oh, well, it's easy enough to criticise, Helen. You've struck a vein, and you're in luck. No more hard work for you."
"There would be if I gave away my money, five hundred dollars at a time. You needn't complain of my good fortune. I have had my share of work to do. Now I am comfortable, and I mean to keep so."
"No matter what becomes of your poor brother?" whined Dick.
"My poor brother must work as I have done, and he won't starve. Do you think, if I were a man," she said, disdainfully, "that I would stoop to ask help of a woman!"
"Well, let me have the money, then," said Dick, gloomily.
Mrs. Kent drew from her pocket-book five ten-dollar bills and placed them in his hand.
"Don't expect any further help," she said. "In justice to my son I must refuse it."