Margaret still made no comment, though she was looking very grave and thoughtful.
"Would it mebby make you ashamed, too," asked Lizzie, "before your grand friends in New Munich, to have her 'round, she talks so Dutch and ignorant?"
"No," Margaret shook her head, "I'm not 'proud and high-minded' like Jennie and Sadie."
"Well," admitted Lizzie confidentially, "I'm not, either; I told Hiram once, 'You have no need to feel ashamed of her. Wasn't Christ's father nothing but a carpenter?' But Hiram answered me, 'Och, Lizzie, you're dumb! Joseph was no blood relation to Christ.'. 'Well,' I said, 'neither is your step-mother your blood relation.'"
"I suppose," Margaret speculated, "if their step-mother had money to leave them, they wouldn't feel so 'high-minded' about her, would they?"
"Oh, no," Lizzie readily assented; "that would make all the difference! But, you see, she hasn't a thing but what she gets from the vegetables she can raise."
"I do begin to see," nodded Margaret.
"Danny never told us," Lizzie ventured tentatively, curiosity evidently getting the better of delicacy, "what you're worth!"
"What I'm 'worth?' He hasn't tried me long enough to find out. But I hope I'll be worth as much to him as you are to Hiram—giving him children and making a home for him."
"But I mean," explained Lizzie, colouring a little at her own temerity, but with curiosity oozing from every pore of her, "what did you bring Danny? I guess Jennie and Sadie told you already that I brought Hiram thirty thousand. And I'll get more when my father is deceased."