“I’m sure I don’t pretend to anything of that sort, being just a trifle stout, and not given to flying. But if you like to think so, and it makes you happy, I wont disturb the idea, because it reminds me of things Carter used to say years and years ago, when we first went to housekeeping in two rooms, with a closet in the cellar for wood and coal. Then—then——”
All at once, even to her own astonishment, the woman broke down, her eyes filled with tears, and her bosom heaved with sobs. Impatient with herself, she snatched a handkerchief from her pocket, and swept its rich lace across the redness of her eyes, and gave out a gurgling, hysterical laugh.
“I wonder what’s come over me,” she said, at last, shaking out her moist handkerchief. “There is no telling about me. Carter says I always was a sensitive cretur. Well, Miss Laurence, we were speaking about them pictures. How much now? Ross thought that twenty-five dollars apiece would be little enough.”
“Twenty-five dollars!” exclaimed Ruth, and her large eyes widened like those of an astonished child. “Oh, madam you cannot mean it!”
“What! you don’t think it enough? Well, say thirty; though I have seen pictures twice their size sell for less. Will thirty satisfy you?”
“Oh, madam, I know you are too kind for that but it seems as if you were mocking me. The amount you mentioned first, is so much that I can scarcely believe it.”
The poor girl really could not comprehend her good fortune; she trembled all over. Her great eyes were bent on Mrs. Carter with pleading entreaty, that this cruel, cruel trifling might cease.
Mrs. Carter could not understand all this, but had a vague idea that the price she offered was satisfactory.
“Well,” she said, drawing a reticule-purse from her pocket by its gold chains, and taking from that a roll of money, “if you are content with twenty-five, I don’t mind throwing in a trifle, so we will make it thirty. There it is—six twenties; and I must say, it does me good to pay it over. Just roll it up, and buy yourself something nice with it. There! there!”
Mrs. Carter came close to Ruth, and bent over her with the money fluttering from her gloved fingers. Instead of receiving it with smiles, as the good woman expected, the young creature, half rose from her cushions, wound both arms around that short neck, and kissed the smiling face with a passionate outburst of gratitude, which awoke all the warm genial womanhood of Mrs. Carter’s nature into active life.