"Do you?" asked Amy, so wistfully that the other was confirmed in her opinion of the poverty.
"I should think you would like to work in the mill, wouldn't you? If your folks have lost their money, it would seem real handy to have a little coming in."
"Yes, it would, indeed. But I couldn't do it."
"Why not? You're strong enough, I guess, if you aren't so big."
"Yes, I'm strong and well. But father has forbidden me to think of it."
"Pshaw! He'd come round. If you want to do it, I would; and once you were settled he wouldn't care, or he couldn't help himself, anyway. He's kind of queer, isn't he? I've heard that."
"Queer? Yes; just as queer as a splendid gentleman like him must always seem to common people," flashed the daughter, all the more disturbed because she realized that there had been once, if not now, just a little truth in the suggestion.
"Pshaw! I didn't mean to make you mad. O' course, I hadn't ought to have spoke so about your own father. I s'pose I'd be mad, too, if anybody said things about pa. They do, sometimes, or about ma, their naming us children by fancy names, as they did. You see, they're English, pa and ma are, and so they named us after English aristocratics. Ma's a master hand for reading novels, too, and she gets notions out of them. We take the Four Hundred Story Paper, and the Happy Evening Gazette. Do you take them?"
"No; I never heard of them."