Pattie showed some surprise.
"It is no mistake," she said. "Of course I wish to support myself. Just now I could hardly be spared from Dot."
"Oh, as for that—I don't know about the 'sparing!' It isn't much of a question of 'sparing,' I take it. Not but what Mrs. Cragg has been a kind friend to you, I make no doubt; but all the same, it isn't likely she should want to have your father's daughter with her child."
Pattie looked at Mrs. Smithers, with eyes that had a sharp light in them.
"I don't understand."
Mrs. Smithers tossed her head.
"It's nothing so very hard to understand," she said. "Only, you do give yourself an uncommon lot of airs, Pattie; and when one comes to know that your father was turned off from his situation for being light-fingered —why, then, of course—"
"If Mrs. Cragg has told you that—"
"Oh, I didn't say it was Mrs. Cragg. I didn't say it was anybody in particular. But the tale's going about, and folks believe it. It don't matter who said it first. It was somebody that knows. You've been uncommon close about yourself, ever since you came here; but that sort of thing is sure to come out. And it isn't to be wondered at neither that Mrs. Cragg don't like a girl of your stamp to be in the house as one of themselves."
Pattie had grown white, but she did not lose her composure.