"I see—and you?" smiling.
She drew a long breath. "I'm trying to play Big Sister—and sometimes I'm afraid I'm more like a big brother—I haven't the—patience."
His attentive face invited further confidence. It was the face of a man who had listened to many confidences, and instinctively she felt that others had been helped by him.
"You see I want Barry to pass the Bar examination. All of the men of our family have been lawyers, But Barry won't study, and he has taken a position in the Patent Office. He's wasting these best years as a clerk."
Then she remembered, and begged, "Forgive me——"
"There's nothing to forgive," he said. "I suppose I am wasting my years as a clerk in the Treasury Department—but there's this difference, your brother's life is before him—mine is behind me. His ambitions are yet to be fulfilled. I have no—ambitions."
"You don't mean that—you can't mean it?"
"Why not?"
"Because you're a man! Oh, I should have been the man of our family—and Barry and Constance should have been the girls." Her eyes blazed.
"You think then, as I heard you say the other night on the stairs, that the world is ours; yet we men let it stand still."