“And do his own work like a common Yankee?” cried Corinne scornfully. “You forget that all the servants will be gone. I’d rather go to Brazil.”
“You might pay the servants as we do in England,” Dorothea suggested. “Papa says it is much cheaper in the end.”
“My dear, how original!” Mrs. Stewart remarked, sewing at top speed. “Children, I hope you will give heed to your cousin. She has quite a mind, quite a mind indeed. Of course I don’t see how we can house the servants and clothe them and feed them and pay them, too; but I’ll certainly mention it to your Uncle Charles.”
She stopped abruptly to thread her needle and it was as if a river had suddenly ceased its soothing murmur.
A little later, Harriot having consumed the last piece of cake, the girls took their departure with promises to see each other soon again.
“What do you think,” Harriot said under her breath, when they were well away from the house, “Lee Hendon’s mother is dead and he’s run away!”
“Why, how did you know that?” demanded Dorothea, thinking or Mrs. Stewart’s secrecy in the matter.
“Corinne told me,” Harriot explained. “Aunt Cora doesn’t know and I didn’t want to tell her, because she’ll blab to everybody she sees, and—”
“Yes, she told me,” Dorothea said, calmly. “She didn’t want you to know till I had told Aunt Parthenia.”
“Well!” cried the outraged Harriot. “I like that! As if I couldn’t keep a secret better than Aunt Cora. At any rate, I don’t see why it should be made such a mystery. April will be the last person in the town to find it out. No one will tell her, of course.”