"Oh, not the work'us, please, please!" entreated Ailie, with passionate earnestness.
"Why, ye wouldn't be so badly off there," said Job, soothingly. "Maybe I'll come to it myself some day, I was a-thinkin' only yesterday."
"Oh, not the work'us, please!" was all Ailie could reiterate.
"What's to be done with ye, then?" asked Job, putting the puzzling question in his turn.
A pause followed, during which Ailie looked round the room, towards the closet, and back again into the kind hearty face, with its silver locks drooping over the forehead.
"I wish ever so much I was your little girl," sighed Ailie.
"Why, do ye like the old man?" asked Job, thinking how her arms had clung to him the night before.
"Lots!" said Ailie emphatically. "I'd like to be mother's still, 'cause I love her, you see, but I wish you was my—my—gran'father," concluded Ailie, with a great stretch of imagination, "so's I could get up on your knee, like as I did on father's, afore he was ill."
"Father was good to ye, wasn't he, eh?" asked Job.
Ailie nodded in her quick way.