“You don’t say!” Mr. Bellows commented doubtfully. “Well, that had ought to net you something—eh?”
“We shan’t have anything; everything will be gone,” the girl said coldly.
“Sho! that’s too bad,” Mr. Bellows said good-naturedly. He stuck his thumbs into the arm-holes of his vest, and scowled absent-mindedly into space. Then he looked at Barbara again. “Mortgage—eh?” he suggested. “Coverin’ pretty much everythin’—eh?”
“Everything,” repeated Barbara, in a dull tone.
“Everythin’—save an’ exceptin’ one smart, willin’ young woman—eh? You’d ought to bring a purty good figger—in the right market.”
Mr. Bellows paused to give way to mirth once more.
“The matrimonial market’s the one partic’lar field I ain’t had much ’xperience in,” he concluded. “An’ auctionin’ off goods of the sort you mention ain’t ’xactly in my line, an’ that’s a fac’, miss. So I guess——”
“You don’t understand,” Barbara interrupted quickly. “Let me explain. When I found that everything was lost”—her voice trembled in spite of herself—“I thought at first I would teach school—let the farm go and teach——”
“Well, why don’t you do that?” Mr. Bellows inquired. He was a kind-hearted man, with sympathies somewhat blunted by his professional zeal in a calling which for the most part concerned itself with clearing away the wreckage of human hopes. “You’d make a right smart school-ma’am, I should say.”