"If ye didn't do that, what should ye do?" James inquired.
"I shouldn't do anything unless I was forced," said she. "I don't want to do anything, except enjoy myself—read, play the piano, pay visits, and have plenty of really nice clothes. Why should I want to do anything? I can tell you this—if I didn't need the money I'd never go inside that school again, or any other!"
She was heated.
"Dun ye mean to say," he asked, with an ineffable intonation, "that Susan and that there young farmer have gone gadding off to Canada and left you all alone with nothing?"
"Of course they haven't," said Helen. "Why, mother is the most generous old thing you can possibly imagine. She's left all her own income to me."
"How much?"
"Well, it comes to rather over thirty shillings a week."
"And can't a single woman live on thirty shillings a wik? Bless us! I don't spend thirty shillings a wik myself."
Helen raised her chin. "A single woman can live on thirty shillings a week," she said. "But what about her frocks?"
"Well, what about her frocks?" he repeated.