"Well, no, not much for some folks, but a good deal for us; we're rather poor, you know." There is a pride that conceals poverty; there is a greater pride that makes haste to declare it, feeling that only hidden poverty is shameful. "You know father was a smart man in some ways," Barbara continued, "but he hadn't any knack. He lost most of his money before he came to Illinois; and then when he got here he made the mistake, that so many made, of settling in the timber, though very little of the prairie had been taken up yet. If he hadn't been afraid of the winters on the prairie, we might have been pretty well off; but it's been a hard struggle opening a farm in the woods. Then we have had nothing but misfortune. My father died of a congestive chill, and then my three brothers and my sister died, and Tom and I are all that's left to mother. And there are doctor's bills to pay yet, and a little debt on the farm."
"Yes, yes," said Hiram, wounded in thinking of the pain he was giving Barbara in forcing her to speak thus frankly of the family troubles. "I know what it is. Poverty and I are old acquaintances; regular old cronies. She's going to stand by my side till I graduate, anyhow; but as I have known her ever since I was born, I can afford to laugh in her face. There's nothing like being used to a thing."
Barbara made no reply to this. Mason sat and looked at her awhile in silence. There was no good in trying to help her on his present footing. He leaned forward, resting his elbow on the loom-bench by her side.
"Look here, Barbara," he said, with abrupt decision, "let's, you and me, go in partnership with our poverty some day, and see what'll come of it. I suppose, so far as money is concerned, the equations would be about equal without the trouble of figuring it out."
Barbara looked at her hands in her lap with her eyes out of focus, and made no reply. After a while Hiram spoke again.
"Did I—make you mad, Barbara?" He used the word "mad" in the sense attached to it in that interior country, meaning angry.
"No, not mad," said Barbara. "Not that—but—I don't know what to say. I don't believe what you propose can ever be."
Mason waited for her to explain herself, but she did not seem to be able to get her own consent. At length he got up and went to the mantel-piece and took down Barbara's slate.
"Let's talk about algebra awhile," he said.