“If she lived in China she could be a grandmother,” said Dinah.
“I have always kept trouble from you; that is why, at your mature age, you have so little character. In an emergency you would have no more responsibility than Nellie Bird. If you had studied arithmetic instead of always writing poetry and compositions, you might have been teaching now and have been independent.”
“Father isn’t tired of taking care of her,” said Dinah, spiritedly. “It’s mean for you to say that.”
“Why don’t you write a novel and make some money?”
“I don’t know how.”
“Can’t you learn?”
“I study all the time.”
“Why don’t you write flowery language?”
“I don’t know how.”
“It is Gus that has spoiled you; he has nipped your genius in the bud. What does he know, a clerk in a bank? I know that he tells you to leave out the long words; and it is the long words that take. I shouldn’t have had my dreadful cough winter after winter if I hadn’t worked hard to spare your time that winter you wrote those three little books for the Sunday School Union; I lay all my sickness and pain to that winter.”