“Why, tell me all about what you’re crying for, to be sure,” cried Keziah sharply; but all the same with a motherly attempt or two at soothing. “Surely master hasn’t been at you again about Mr Frank, has he?”
“O, yes—yes,” sobbed the girl; “and it does seem so cruel and hard. O, ’Ziah, I’ve no one to talk to but you—no one to ask for help. He talks as if Frank could help being poor, and not prospering in his business, when, poor fellow, he strove so hard.”
“But what did he bring all that up for?” cried Keziah. “Mr Frank hasn’t been here these two months, I’ll swear. Did you say anything?”
“No, no!” sobbed the girl, bursting into a fresh paroxysm of weeping.
“Then some one must have brought it up. There, I see plain as plain. Bless him! He ought to be boiled in his own sugar, that he ought! He’s a nice fellow, he is, for a sugar-baker, to come here tattling and setting people against other people.”
“What do you mean?” sobbed May Richards, gazing wonderingly at her comforter.
“Mean? Why, that that old Tom Brough ought to be ashamed of himself to come tattling to master about Mr Frank. That was it, wasn’t it?”
“No, no!” sobbed the poor girl wearily.
“Then what did he come for?” said Keziah.
There was a pause, during which May wept bitterly.