"What life? You don't mean the hardware business?"
"Don't be silly! … You can't go on living over here alone by yourself with that child."
"Why not?"
"Oh, because—you must do something, Vick! I want you to be famous."
"That doesn't seem quite possible, now," he replied gently.
"You'll come and live with me—oh, I need you, Vick!"
She threw her arms about him and hugged him tightly to her as she had as a girl. The intensity of her feeling moved him strangely, and her words also. What was it she meant by "needing him"?
"You must—that's the thing!"
Holding her head away she searched his face critically, and her heart was wrung again by the sense of waste in it all. "Poor brother," she murmured, tightening her clasp.
"I'm not going over as a helpless dependent!" he protested, and suddenly without warning he shot out his question,—"And what have you made out of it? How have the years been?"