Katherine, Chapters XVII-XX [pp. 394-416]

1884.] KA THARINE. 397
wouldn't have believed it of you. If it had been Anne, nowbut, to do her justi~e, though she wastes five dollars to your one
she would know her own interests better than that. The truth is,
Eliza, you don't seem to realize your own position at all. If Deyo
can't be caught and squeezed everything James owned will have
to go, and it is doubtful whether the claims can be fully settled
even then. There are new ones coming in still. I have nothing
to say against that, though he was as clearly victimized as anybody. But it is all the more reason why you should have held
on to all you were entitled to. It is very easy to talk about living on nothing a year, refusing the rent from Kitty's house and
selling it as soon as possible; but what good will it do? If
everything could be cleared up in that way it might be different.
But how are you and she to manage? Is she fit for anything?
Has she even finished her schooling yet, supposing she thi~nks of
preparing herself for teaching? One thing you may rest assured
of, and that is that I shall use the authority given me under her
father's will to prevent her income from being disposed of except for her benefit. Do use your common sense. A month ago
I would have said you were as full of it as an egg is of meat, but
here you go about like a madwoman, mopping up debts with
which you have no more concern than I have, and which, as a
matter of fact, you have no right at all to pay until the whole
business is straightened out and every one put on an equal footing."
Mr. Warren spoke in a tone which nothing but his habitual
respect for his sister-in-law and his real sympathy in her bereavement saved from being a snarl. Mrs. Danforth hardly
noticed it. What he had been saying, though not really new to
her, for he had urged it in less forcible terms before, seemed for
the first time to assume significance in her mind. Her ignorance
of affairs beyond the limits of the four walls of her household was
what one would call almost childish in these days when women as
sume and carry without difficulty so many more burdens than of
old. But she belonged to an older generation-the generation~ in
which, while man and wife were one in the eye of the law in all
that regarded money, the man was the one assuming all responsibilities, controlling all income from whatever sources it might
arise, even when it was the woman 5 inheritance or the product of
her daily labor, and at liberty to divert it to his own purposes by
his pleasure during life and by his will after death. Neither Mr.
Danforth nor his wife had ever questioned the justice of the law
in this regard, she because she had never suffered from its pres