"We made a foolish miscalculation in the amount Selina is to receive for her teaching. We women are poor arithmeticians. With her lack of experience it is gratifying that she will be commanding the customary price as it is."
By this Selina understood that her father was to be spared as much of her disappointment as possible. She really owed this gentleman something on account in this teaching business, if she were given to considering money received from him after any such fashion. He had smilingly, at her mother's request, advanced the amount needed for books and other material for her teaching, and a second sum for carfare to the Williams' in bad weather. But these transactions were not on the mind of Selina at all. Just as the economic end rather than Aunt Viney was the thing considered by Mamma in the readjustment of the family wash, so Papa, as a source of supply was taken for granted by Selina. It would not have occurred to her, nor yet to Mamma or Auntie, or to any of the mothers and aunts and daughters whom they knew, that the sum of her earnings was offset by the amount advanced for her equipping. On the other hand Selina was loving, and quite understood that it should be the feelings of her father she must spare.
"Mamma looked around the castor and spoke briskly."
"The experience will mean everything," she claimed briskly and promptly to her mother's cue, "I ought to be glad to teach for nothing, I daresay, to get it."
Auntie looked alarmed at any such view of the matter. "I knew of an apprentice in my young days, our gardener's son, bound out for the experience in a rope-walk, who carried thirty-seven boils at one time from the mildewed cornmeal they fed him. I don't approve of anyone working for anybody for nothing. We're sure to undervalue what we don't pay the price for. It's a poor plan."
"How you wander," from Mamma.
"Not from my point," from Auntie stoutly. "I've made it."