"Three dollars!" shouted Brenda, "three hundred dollars, what you call twelve hundred francs."
"Oh, my!" exclaimed Marie, her eyes almost jumping out of her head, "oh, my! I never did see so much money, let me look." So they let her touch the bills, and they laughed at the comments she made, and especially when she cried, "Louis would marry me if that money was mine."
"I thought he was going to anyway," said Belle, "you have always said that you were engaged."
"Oh, yes," she replied. "Oh, yes, sometime, perhaps, but it takes much money to get married. If I have to wait too long, perhaps Louis will find another girl with more money. But no matter." And she went out of the room looking much less cheerful than before she had seen the money.
"How mercenary!" said Belle as she disappeared, for Belle always had a word large enough to fit every happening.
"Well, it must be hard not to have any money but just what you earn every week," interposed Edith sympathetically.
"Oh it's better not to have much money than to have a man think only of that in marrying you," responded Belle in her most worldly-wise voice.
"Come, I think that we are talking of things that we know nothing about," said Nora, "but if I were you, Brenda, I would not let every one in the house know where that money is."
"Nonsense, I always carry the key with me, and anyway it won't be here long," answered Brenda.
"No matter, if I were you I would give it to Mr. Barlow to take down town."