She would hate the shop dreadfully. And after all the three dollars a week she would earn the first year, would not more than pay for her board and clothes. Jenny had gone at it with a vim. But she hated books. The only thing that interested her was arithmetic. Uncle Jason could not put it in words, but he could feel it.
The supper passed off without any squabbles. Sam and Jenny walked down to the house, the children were tired and went to bed, and Aunt Jane came out on the porch to take a turn in her rocking chair and fan herself cool. But the wind blew up, and she did not even have to fan.
"Did you ask whether Helen would come home next week? Polly Samson comes two days to make Jen's wedding gown, and she'll be married on the sixteenth. We've got along wonderfully the last fortnight, and I begin to see my way clear. Dear, how I shall miss Jen, but I'm glad she'll be so near by. And she bid 'em good-by at the shop to-day. Reely's getting to be quite a help. I don't know but it was better for her to have Helen away in vacation."
Uncle Jason felt this was the golden opportunity. The lovers would not be home until about ten. It took some courage. He cleared his throat, listened a moment to the crickets, and then plunged into the subject; blurting it all out before Aunt Jane could recover her breath. In fact there was such an awful silence he wondered.
Then the storm descended. He smoked his pipe and listened, though he heard the crickets with one ear, he would have said. And when he did not make an immediate answer, she said angrily:
"You never consented to any such tomfoolery!"
"In the first place," he began slowly, "we couldn't keep Helen against her will. Her father didn't make us guardians. At fourteen she can choose. She isn't bound to us, and we haven't any real claim on her——"
"Except common gratitude," Aunt Jane flung out.
"We've taken care of her a few years. I dare say there'd be people in North Hope who would take a smart girl like Helen and pay her three dollars a week. Mrs. Dayton thought she might stay there and go to the High School before that other offer come along. And Warfield thinks it would be dreadful not to give her a chance at school when she could earn it for herself. She doesn't want to go in the shop——"
"As if a girl of fourteen knew what she wanted!"