"Want, my dear Tom, is a purely relative condition," said Miss Bancroft. "There are needs, which to certain natures are more intolerable than physical hunger. To deprive a young girl of simple, innocent delights—companionship of her own kind, dainty clothes, harmless enjoyments—is like robbing a plant of sun and rain."
"Do you mean to tell me that poverty need deprive any girl of such things? Nonsense, Elizabeth! I have seen girls who had but two dresses to their name, who worked and struggled and economized, and who nevertheless had as much pleasure—indeed more, I'll wager—than the most petted heiress in the land. And what's more, they made better wives and better mothers and better citizens. They knew how many cents make a dollar, and how many dollars their men could make in a week by the sweat of their brow, working not eight hours a day, but ten and twelve. One never heard this sickly whine from them—this talk that women must be coddled and pampered, and that men can eat their hearts out to provide the 'sun' in which they bask like pet lizards! They didn't ask for 'sunlight'—they asked only that they might work and save with their husbands—that they could be fit partners, and they found their joy, not in 'dainty clothes' and 'harmless enjoyments' but in giving their strength and their courage for their husbands and their children!" Mr. Prescott had risen to his feet in the vehemence of his feeling, and was walking back and forth, his hands locked behind his back, and his head lowered and thrust forward between his hunched-up shoulders.
"Good heavens, I've got him roused for fair," thought Miss Bancroft, with a mixture of amusement and dismay. "And of course, theoretically he's dead right. Now why is it that so many things which, theoretically, are dead right, practically, are all wrong? That's what I've got to prove to him—and I don't know whether I shall succeed after all. I must take care not to be sentimental—that rouses him dreadfully."
Aloud she said, in a quiet voice:
"Listen, Tom—under ordinary circumstances I should agree with you absolutely. But a short time ago I spoke of want being relative. You said that your nieces are not in want. You meant, of course, that they had food and clothes and shelter. If they were girls who lived in an absolutely different plane of life that would be sufficient for their happiness. They could have pleasure with their two dresses and their one best bonnet, because everyone else of their class would have no more. But take one of them out of that class; put her where her only companions would have to be sought for among men and women who lived on a scale of comparative wealth, where, to make friends, she would have to appear well, and so on—then, what in the first case was at least a sufficiency, now becomes tragically inadequate. There is no cure but for that girl to recede from the class to which by birth, breeding and instinct she belongs.
"You have built up a great fortune. You yourself are what you boast of being—a self-made man—a man originally of the people. But you made your nephew a gentleman—understand that I am using the word in the commonest sense. Consequently his children belong to a class in which needs must be measured by a different scale from that used for working women. They live—as you do, and most likely because you do—in a very rich community. They suffer from wants that girls of a different class would never know. They are deprived of things which your working girl would not be deprived of. They are poorer on their two thousand a year, or whatever it is, than a peasant woman would be on two hundred, because their particular needs are more expensive."
"They will be very rich—after I die," said Mr. Prescott in a low voice, after a short pause. "But I won't let them even suspect it. That little wife of George's—I never want to see her again—she is a great little gambler. If she felt sure that in a few years her daughters were coming into a fortune of several millions, Heaven only knows but that she'd have the last cent of it spent in advance. You seem to have gleaned an immense amount of information concerning my nieces—perhaps you know what her plans for them are."
"You know, Tom, that I was as much opposed—indeed more opposed, perhaps, than you were to George's marrying Lallie. But that is neither here nor there now. I am afraid that she is—well, attempting things for her girls that lie beyond her income. You must not blame her. She isn't a wise woman, but I am sure that she is one who suffers more for her mistakes than she causes others to suffer. Of course I am no judge of that.
"She is a little gambler, no doubt, as you said—but a gallant one. She is playing against rather desperate odds—and she cannot be blamed if she plays foolishly. As I understand it, I believe that her object is to give her girls, by hook or crook, advantages that lie beyond her means, the goal being that one of them or both will marry—well. If she wins—well and good——"
"Well and good—fiddlesticks! Nonsense! Good Heavens!" shouted Mr. Prescott. "Whatever are you driving at, Elizabeth? I can't make head or tail of all this talking. You come to me, telling me that my nieces are in want of some kind or other, that that mother of theirs is living beyond her means in her attempt to put them on a footing with the daughters of millionaires, so that they can marry some mother's son whom they fancy can stand their extravagance, and as far as I can make out, you want me to defray their expenses, so that the business of ruining some other man's boy as mine was ruined will be less difficult for them. Have you gone clean daft?"