“Nothing else?”
“I don’t know.”
The girl paused.—“Why don’t you let me,” she said, after a while, “why don’t you let me go and work with the other girls at the factory? I should make money there for you and me both.”
The man smiled—such a smile—it seemed to bring into sudden play all the revolting characteristics of his countenance. “Child,” he said, “you are just fifteen, and a sad fool you are: perhaps if you went to the factory, you would get away from me; and what should I do without you? No, I think, as you are so pretty, you might get more money another way.”
The girl did not seem to understand this allusion: but repeated, vacantly, “I should like to go to the factory.”
“Stuff!” said the man, angrily; “I have three minds to—”
Here he was interrupted by a loud knock at the door of the hovel.
The man grew pale. “What can that be?” he muttered. “The hour is late—near eleven. Again—again! Ask who knocks, Alice.”
The girl stood for a moment or so at the door; and as she stood, her form, rounded yet slight, her earnest look, her varying colour, her tender youth, and a singular grace of attitude and gesture, would have inspired an artist with the very ideal of rustic beauty.
After a pause, she placed her lips to a chink in the door, and repeated her father’s question.