"O-oh—just because. He isn't—he isn't that kind of a man. Don't you remember, Mummy, you say that often to me, when I ask you in 52 the street to give money to some one who looks poor?"
Elinor hung her head like a child. Angel knew more about character by instinct, it seemed, than she had learned through her years of experience! But then, it occurred to her, perhaps, after all, she had not gone about learning her lessons in the right way. Maybe it was just as wise, if not wiser, to believe people might be good until you found out that they were bad, instead of beginning the other way around!
"What would you have done in my place?" she asked Angel.
The child was silent for a moment. "If he wouldn't keep the ring, why, I s'pose I should have thought and thought of some other way to make him and big Suze and little Suze and Paulette—and the kitten—all happy for Christmas!" she exclaimed, on an inspiration. "Oh, mother, we must do something. I shall have a horrid Christmas if we can't. And that would be a shame because grandpa's sent me a—a—what did you call it, Mademoiselle?" 53
"A check," said Rose, starting out of a brown study about her Christmas, and how she was to spend a part of it with Claude.
"Yes, a big check. Mummy, how much money did you want to give the children's father?"
"A hundred dollars," Elinor replied.
"Is that much?"
"It must have seemed so to him."
"Well, it doesn't to me. Grandpa's sent me five hundred to buy myself just what I like, to make my Christmas happy."