"I remember you," said Carlisle, slowly. "I understood from Miss Cooney that you had been very sick. You don't look sick--especially."
"I been away, ma'am. On a Trip," explained the pale operative with a kind of eagerness. "Dr. Vivian he sent me off to Atlantic City, in New Jersey, and then to a hotel in the Adriondacts. I conv'lessed, ma'am, y'know?"
"I see. Now you are going back to the Works, I suppose?"
It was not a question easy to answer with delicacy, to answer and avoid all risk of hurting a lady's feelings. How explain that the Works were expressly prohibited by doctor's orders, though you yourself knew that you ought to go back? How tell of special lessons at a Writing Desk every night, such as prepared people to be Authors, when anybody could see by looking at you that you were only a work-girl, and you yourself felt that it was all wrong someway?...
Kern spoke timidly, though her wide eyes did not falter.
"Well--not just to-reckly, ma'am. The plan was, till I got my strength back, that I might lay off a little and go--go to School."
"I see."
The tone was cool, and the girl added with a little gasp:
"And then go back to bunchin' again,--yes, ma'am. It's--it's my trade...."
Many feelings moved in Cally, and it might be that the best of them were not uppermost. Perhaps the glittering material possessed her blood, even more than of habit. Perhaps it was only her instinct warning her to take her stand now with her father, where was safety and her ordered course. Or at least it was hardly a pure impulse of generosity that made her open the plump little gold bag at her side, and produce a bill with a yellow back.