“No,” the little girl answered. “We didn’t. We didn’t have any money, except what came in the way I said. We sold some old-fashioned dishes, and a little bit of cranberry bog for twenty-five dollars. We didn’t have any other money.”
“But you must have had something to live on. You can’t make bricks without straw, or grow little girls up without nourishing food in their tummies.” He caught an unexpected flicker of an eyelash, and realized for the first time that the child was acutely aware of every word he was saying, that even his use of English was registering a poignant impression on her consciousness. The thought strangely embarrassed him. “We say tummies in New York, Eleanor,” he explained hastily. “It’s done here. The New England stomick, however, is almost entirely obsolete. You’ll really get on better in the circles to which you are so soon to be accustomed if you refer to it in my own simple fashion;—but to return to our muttons, Eleanor, which is French for 8 getting down to cases, again, you must have had something to live on after your uncle died. You are alive now. That would almost seem to prove my contention.”
“We didn’t have any money, but what I earned.”
“But—what you earned. What do you mean, Eleanor?”
The child’s face turned crimson, then white again. This time there was no mistaking the wave of sensitive emotion that swept over it.
“I worked out,” she said. “I made a dollar and a half a week running errands, and taking care of a sick lady vacations, and nights after school. Grandma had that shock, and Grandpa’s back troubled him. He tried to get work but he couldn’t. He did all he could taking care of Grandma, and tending the garden. They hated to have me work out, but there was nobody else to.”
“A family of three can’t live on a dollar and a half a week.”
“Yes, sir, they can, if they manage.”
“Where were your neighbors all this time, Eleanor? You don’t mean to tell me that the good, kindly people of Cape Cod would have stood by and 9 let a little girl like you support a family alone and unaided. It’s preposterous.”
“The neighbors didn’t know. They thought Uncle Amos left us something. Lots of Cape Cod children work out. They thought that I did it because I wanted to.”