"That is what I have been asking myself for days past."
"That is why you did the washing!" said the younger slowly and with awe, as though this thought did indeed bring home a realizing sense of the situation. "We are awfully—miserably poor," she added in a panic.
"Hush! Not so loud," warned her sister.
"I shall have to leave school and help you do the housework, and Frank can never have any education at all," declared Mildred despairingly.
"He will have to get a position in some store as a cash boy. Mr. Van Tassel will probably help him that much," she finished dismally.
"Hush! Don't keep bringing Mr. Van Tassel into it," said Clover nervously. "I can't bear the thought of begging anybody for anything, even influence."
"Then you have thought of something," exclaimed Mildred eagerly.
"No, I haven't, I haven't," rejoined the other hastily. "Oh, Milly, forgive me." Her tone and gesture as she put one hand to her face and quickly extended the other to her sister touched the latter with great surprise. Mildred took the hand and squeezed it between her own.
"Forgive you, you old darling," she said, tears springing to her eyes. "What for, I wonder? Because you have three children to bring up and work for when you are only twenty? or because you, the prettiest girl in Hyde Park, have wizzled up all your poor fingers washing for us? What is it? Oh, Clover dear!"
For Clover was crying in a hasty, furtive fashion, stifling her sobs, and drying her eyes with light touches, fearing to make the lids redder.