"And the factory—I've got to make some money next winter. I can't use any of Aunt Tillie's savin's. But when I know what I might be doin', it's not any too easy to think of goin' back there!"
"Perhaps you won't have to go," said Peter again.
Her eyes glanced at him quickly, looked away, then returned to his face curiously.
"I don't just understand what you mean."
"I mean," said Peter, "that we'll try to find the means to keep you out of the glass factory—to keep on with the music."
"But how——? I can't be dependent on——" She paused with a glance at him. And then quickly, with her characteristic frankness that always probed straight to her point, "You mean that you will pay my way?"
"Merely that I'm going to find the money—somehow."
But she shook her head violently. "Oh, no, I couldn't let you do that, Mr. Nichols. I couldn't think of it."
"But you've got to go on, Beth. I've made up my mind to that. You'll go pretty fast. It won't be long before you'll know all that I can teach you. And then I'm going to put you under the best teacher of this method in New York. In a year or so you'll be earning your own way——"
"But I can't let you do this for me. You're doin' too much as it is—too much that I can't pay back."