“But I can do needlework,” she said. “Wouldn’t somebody pay me for that?”
I could hardly help smiling. “You can darn for ten minutes at a time,” I said.
“Oh—darning—I can’t bear darning. I could work hard, if it was to get my living.”
Her eyes flashed as she spoke. I said, after a pause—“If you really want to be useful, you might help Cherry sometimes.”
“What, in darning?” she asked.
“That, and other things. One more in the house makes more work to be done. Why should you not take your share?”
“And that will make me a little less of a burden! Yes, of course I will,” she said. “I do hate mending and washing up, but, of course I’ll do them. Why didn’t you tell me before?”
“I am going to tell you one other thing,” I said; and I know I spoke quietly, as I should not have done some days before. “You must not laugh at my boys, Maimie, for their loving obedience to their mother. You must not lead them into wrong.”
She opened her eyes widely. “Lead them into wrong!” she repeated. “Laugh at the boys!”
“Last Saturday afternoon,” I said. “I do not know all that passed; but something of it has reached me. You must not do that again.”