"You talk like I was a boardin' school instead o' bein' your guardeen. No, siree; it's your money, an' that ends it. You git it when you're twenty-one."
"We'll see, daddy," she replied, a stubborn light in her dark eyes. "But I want to learn to do something worth while. If I had a million it would be just the same."
"You'll have something to do when you git married," observed he sharply.
"Nonsense!"
"I s'pose you're goin' to say you never expect to git married. They all say it—an' then take the first feller 'at comes along."
"I didn't take the first, or the second, or the third, or the—"
"Hold on! Gosh a'mighty, have you had that many? Well, why don't you go into the matrimonial agent's business? That's an occupation."
"Oh, none of them was serious, daddy," she said naïvely.
"You could have all of the men in the county!" he declared proudly. "Only," he added quickly, "it wouldn't seem jest right an' proper."
"There was a girl at Miss Brown's a year ago who had loads of money, and yet she declared she was going to have an occupation. Nobody knew much about her or why she left school suddenly in the middle of a term. I liked her, for she was very nice to me when I first went there, a stranger. Mr. Reddon—you've heard me speak of him—was devoted to her, and I'm sure she liked him. It was only yesterday I heard from her. She is going to teach school in this township next winter."