"To-morrow is half-holiday, you know, dear, and I've talked with Cleena. She wishes you to come and spend the night at 'Charity House,' and we'll fix things about that club all right."
"What's that about a club?" asked another girl, noticing how the hunchback's face brightened. "Are you two going to join ours?"
"Maybe; maybe not. Maybe we'll compromise and have but one. Though we can do little until after Christmas, it's so near now."
"Oh, don't get up another. We have just lovely times in ours. All the boys come and—but I'll not tell. I'll leave you to see. They wanted I should ask you, and your brother, too. He's real nice looking, 'Jack doffer' says, even if he is lame."
Amy's cheek burned, and her quick temper got her into trouble.
"My brother Hallam is a very, very handsome boy. Even with his lameness he's a thousand times better looking than any boy in this mill, and what's more, he's a gentleman!"
Then this champion of the aristocracy, which she thought she disdained but now discovered she was proud to call her own class, walked off with her nose in the air and her dark eyes glittering with an angry light.
"There, now you've done it!" cried Gwendolyn, in amazement. "But ma said it wouldn't last. She says that's the way with all the heroines in her novels that lose their money and pretend to be just plain folks afterward. They never are. They're always 'ristocratics an' they can't help it."
"Oh, well, they shouldn't try," remarked this young "heroine," fiercely. "I don't care at all what they say about me, but they'd best let my Hal alone."
"Hoity-toity, I don't see as he's any better than anybody else."