Chapter II
A Ten-Dollar Bill
‘I suppose you’ll be wanting some finery, little girl,’ said Mr Harding the next morning as he pushed away his chair from the breakfast table. ‘Dress is the first consideration, isn’t it, with women?’
‘I don’t know about the finery, father,’ and Pauline laughed a little. ‘I expect I shall be satisfied with the essentials.’
Mr Harding crossed the room to an old-fashioned secretary which stood in one corner. Coming back, he held out to her a ten-dollar bill. ‘Will this answer? Money is terrible tight just now, and the mortgage falls due next week. It’s hard work keeping the wolf away these dull times.’
Pauline forced her lips to form a ‘Thank you,’ as she put the bank-note in her pocket, and then began silently to clear the table, her thoughts in a tumultuous whirl. Ten dollars! Her father’s hired man received a dollar a day. She had been working hard for years, and had received nothing but the barest necessaries in the way of clothing, purchased under Mrs Harding’s economical eye. When Martha Spriggs came to take her place she would have her regular wages. Were hired helpers the only ones whose labour was deemed worthy of reward? Dresses and hats and boots and gloves. Absolute essentials with a vengeance, and ten dollars to cover the whole!
‘You can have Abraham Lincoln and the spring waggon this afternoon, if you want to go to the village for your gewgaws.’
‘I don’t suppose you’ll rest easy till you’ve made the dollars fly. That’s the way with girls, eh? As long as they can have a lot of flimsy laces and ribbons and flowers they’re as happy as birds. Well, well, young folks must have their fling, I suppose. I hope you’ll enjoy your shopping, my dear,’ and Mr Harding started for the barn, serene in the consciousness that he had made his daughter happy in the ability to purchase an unlimited supply of the unnecessary things which girls delight in.
‘You are a grateful piece, I must say!’ remarked her step-mother, as she administered some catnip tea to the whining Polly. ‘I haven’t seen the colour of a ten-dollar bill in as many years, and you put it in your pocket as cool as a cucumber, and go about looking as glum as a herring. Who’s going to do the clothes, I’d like to know? I can’t lay this child out of my arms for a minute. I believe she’s sickening for a fever, and then perhaps your fine relations won’t be so anxious to see you coming. For my part, I wouldn’t be in such a hurry to knuckle to people who waited seventeen years to find whether I was in the land of the living before they said, “How d’ye do.” But then I always was proud-spirited. I despise meachin’ folks.’