“I can’t take you to a palace; but when I come back I mean you shall have a nice, comfortable home in a prettier place—”
“Mother wouldn’t let Dil go on ’count of the babies. There ain’t but two to-day, ’n’ she was awful mad! ’N’ I wouldn’t go athout Dil. No one else ’d know how to take care of me.”
“We will have that all right. And while I am gone you must have some money to buy medicines and the little luxuries your mother cannot afford.”
“She don’t buy nothin’ ever. I ain’t no good, ’cause I’ll never walk, ’n’ only Dil cares about me,” Bess said, as if she had so long accepted the fact the sting was blunted.
“Yes, I care; and I will send a friend here to see you, a young lady, and you need not be afraid to tell her of whatever you want. And Dil may like to know—that I am going to put her in a picture, and the money will be truly her own.”
He was not sure how much pride or personal delicacy people of this class possessed.
“O Dil!” Bess was electrified with joy. “Oh, I hope you made Dil look—just as she’d look if we lived in one of them beautiful houses, ’n’ had a maid ’n’ pretty clo’es, ’n’ no babies to take care of. We never knowed any one like you afore. Patsey’s awful good to us, but he ain’t fine like an’ soft spoken. Are you very rich, mister?”
He laughed.
“Only middling, but rich enough to make life a little pleasanter for you when I come back.”
She seemed to be studying him.