“And you're taking them in your trunk to the other feller?” said Bill grimly.
“Yes, he's poor,” returned the girl defiantly.
“Then your father's name is Mullins?” asked Bill.
“It's not Mullins. I—I—took that name,” she hesitated, with her first exhibition of self-consciousness.
“Wot IS his name?”
“Eli Hemmings.”
A smile of relief and significance went round the circle. The fame of Eli or “Skinner” Hemmings, as a notorious miser and usurer, had passed even beyond Galloper's Ridge.
“The step that you're taking, Miss Mullins, I need not tell you, is one of great gravity,” said Judge Thompson, with a certain paternal seriousness of manner, in which, however, we were glad to detect a glaring affectation; “and I trust that you and your affianced have fully weighed it. Far be it from me to interfere with or question the natural affections of two young people, but may I ask you what you know of the—er—young gentleman for whom you are sacrificing so much, and, perhaps, imperiling your whole future? For instance, have you known him long?”
The slightly troubled air of trying to understand,—not unlike the vague wonderment of childhood,—with which Miss Mullins had received the beginning of this exordium, changed to a relieved smile of comprehension as she said quickly, “Oh yes, nearly a whole year.”
“And,” said the Judge, smiling, “has he a vocation—is he in business?”