“Yas’r.”
“Minerva, if I raised your wages, do you think you’d stay with us? Of course, you know I never saw that man until last night.”
“Then how’d he know so much about them children and all them people?”
“That was just his funny way. He was making believe—just—just to make talk. But you haven’t answered my question. ‘Would you stay if I raised your wages?’”
“How much?”
There was no use in my being mealy mouthed now, and so I flung economy to the four winds of heaven and said:
“Thirty dollars a month.”
Minerva gasped. The bait was in her throat.
“Thirty dollars a month right through the summer,” said I.
“I’ll stay, Mist. Vernon, jes to help you out, but I do hate the country and the night time. If it was all day long all the time, I could stan’ it. If I could git to bed about eight o’clock, I wouldn’t mind it so much, but you have dinner so late, I don’t get the dishes washed in time.”