“Can you call here to-morrow at this time, Mr. Cutter?” she inquired.
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Miss Euphrosyne blushed faintly when Dick presented himself to hear judgement pronounced.
“I suppose you will think it strange,” she said, “but if your plan is feasible, I should wish to carry it out. Frankly, I do want to see the girls married. Clelia and Lydia and I are past the time when women think about such things—but Clytie—and the rest. And, you know, I can remember how Papa and Mama lived together, and sometimes it seems cruelly hard that those dear girls should lose all that happiness—I’m sure it’s the best happiness in the world. And it can never be, here. Now, if I could get occupation—you know that I’m teaching school, I suppose—and if the rest of the girls could keep up their work for the New York people—why—don’t you know, if I didn’t tell—if I put it on business grounds, you know—I think they would feel that it was best, after all, to leave Tusculum....”
Her voice was choked when she recommenced.
“It seems awful for me to talk to you in this cold-blooded way about such a thing; but—what can we do, Mr. Cutter? You don’t know how poor we are. There’s nothing for my little Clytie to do but to be a dressmaker—and you know what that means, in Tusculum. Oh, do you think I could teach school out in Star—Star—Starbuckle?”
Miss Euphrosyne was crying.
Dick’s census of possible pupils in the neighborhood of Starbuck satisfied Miss Euphrosyne. It troubled Dick’s conscience a bit, as he walked back to the hotel. “But they’ll all be married off before she finds it out, so I guess it’s all right,” he reflected.
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