“A pauper relation! Faugh! I didn’t know the Starkweathers owned one.”
“Seems to me, one queer person in the house is enough,” began Hortense.
Her father and sister looked at her sharply.
“Why, Hortense!” exclaimed Belle.
“Ahem!” observed Mr. Starkweather, warningly.
“Well! we don’t want that freak in the house,” grumbled the younger sister.
“There are—ahem!—some things best left unsaid,” observed her father, pompously. “But about this girl from the West——”
“Yes, Pa!” cried his daughters in duet.
“I will see what can be done. Of course, she cannot expect me to support her for long. I will have a serious talk with her.”
“When, Pa?” cried the two girls again.