Page:Pratt portraits - sketched in a New England suburb (IA prattportraitssk00full).pdf/281

 Mary Anne stood half stunned by the violence of the attack. Could it be she whom her father was saying such things about? She? She who would have given her life for Tom? She who had never had a thought for herself? Who had sacrificed every natural wish and taste to serve her family? Who had relinquished her little treasure because Tom had persuaded her that it would make a man of him to have a taste of enterprise? She was to be Tom's ruin? A hot flush of indignation went over her. For the first time in her life she experienced a great throb of self-assertion. In a voice as peremptory as James Spencer's own she demanded: "Are you talking about me, Father? Do you say that I have ruined Tom?"

"Yes, I do! You have systematically spoiled him all his life; and now"

"I have systematically spoiled you all," cried Mary Anne, with a sudden, uncontrollable energy of rebellion. "Every one of you! From you, Father," looking him unflinchingly in the eye, "down to little Ben and Jimmy. I've spoiled you so that you"

"Highty! tighty! Is this the self-sacrificing Mary Anne, who prides herself"

Again she interrupted him. She was no more afraid of her father now, than she was of the Moonlight Sonata, and flinging herself with the whole force of her nature upon the catastrophe, she cried, "I will never be self-sacrificing