Page:Cornelia Meigs--The Pool of Stars.djvu/155

 and tinkering and pretending that you really hoped to accomplish something in the end."

"But I have accomplished something," returned the old man gravely. "I am very near to success now and ten years is not long when you remember that I lost all my records and all my models when the house was burned. No, ten years has not been too much to spend."

"It is not time alone that you have spent, but money, spent it like water when it should have been making Miranda comfortable. Have you stopped, ever, to think of how she works and saves and pinches, how she toils in that garden and fattens miserable fowls for the market so that you can go on with this game of yours?"

"Miranda chose to have it so," Mr. Reynolds returned quietly, but the two onlookers could see him wince.

"Have you known Miranda longer than any of us and have not yet learned that she would give the breath out of her body to make other people happy? Would she complain or choose otherwise if she thought your desire was set upon this one thing, this machine that you call a life work, but that any one else would call a pleasant fad, a plaything that would never succeed?"

"If my recollection is correct," Mr. Reynolds said, "she used to make some sacrifices for you,