“Why, I’d take it right good of you if I could,” Kate Hallard said, after a moment’s hesitation. Mrs. Old Joe had departed to find the mother of Jacinta’s prospective handmaiden, and they were speaking English.
“’Tain’t no meanness in me that won’t have a girl round,” she added, as if wishing to set herself right with her hearer, “but I want some one to sling victuals, at the grille, an’ I can’t have any half-baked girl-squaws round. Men’s devils; I can’t look after them an’ girls too.”
“Oh!” Helen spoke in impulsive protest, and Mrs. Hallard’s laugh was hard again.
“You don’t believe what I said about men, I guess,” she said, and Helen answered very simply:
“Of course not; it couldn’t be true you know, so long as women are not—what you said.”
“I ain’t so sure about the women—not most of ’em—” Mrs. Hallard’s handsome face wore a sneer now.
“Anyway,” she argued, “they’s plenty of ’em doin’ their share o’ the devil’s business in the world.”
“But there are good men,” Helen persisted, “and good women, too.”
“Right you are about there bein’ some,” was the reply; “but I draw the line at there bein’ many. I’ve lived in this world thirty years, nearly, child, an’ I ain’t found such a lot. I know one good man though.”
Her face softened, and at the sight a thrill stirred Helen’s pulses. She felt sure that Mrs. Hallard was speaking of Gard. There was softness under that hard shell after all.