"O Joe! don't. I wish you would learn to be refined. Now, you see all Mrs. Van Wyck's money cannot make her a lady."
Joe put on a solemn face; but the next moment declared that he must keep a sharp look out, or some old sea-captain would snap him up, and set him to scrubbing decks, and holystoning the cable.
And yet they felt quite grave when the fun was over. Their merry vacation had ended, and there was no telling what a year might bring forth.
"I think I should like most of all to be a school-teacher," Florence declared.
"You'll have to wait till you're forty. Who do you s'pose is going to mind a little gal?"
"Not you; for you never mind anybody," was the severe reply.
Florence felt quite grand on the following day, attired in her new green delaine, and her "lovely" gloves. Granny was so busy with the others that she never noticed them; and Florence quieted her conscience by thinking that the money was her own, and she could do what she liked with it. She kept self generally in view, it must be admitted.
Mrs. Van Wyck's overture was destined to make quite a stir. She repeated it to her neighbors in such glowing terms that it really looked like an offer to adopt Florence; and she declaimed bitterly against the pride and the ingratitude of the whole Kenneth family.
Florence held her head loftily, and took great pains to contradict the story; and Joe became the stoutest of champions, though he teased her at home.
"But it's too bad to have her tell everybody such falsehoods; and, after all, three dollars a month would be very low wages. Why, Mary Connor gets a dollar a week for tending Mrs. Hall's baby; and she never scrubs or scours a thing!"