"Take you along, Lucy?"
"Yes. I've always wanted to go to New York. Fred can take care of the farm while we are gone." Fred and the other Guff children had been installed on the place, but none of them had proved of much assistance. Fred, himself, was decidedly lazy—not half as willing as Nat, so Abner himself admitted.
"I don't see how I can take you, Lucy. It costs a heap to go to New York."
"Well, if you can spend the money on yourself, you can spend it on me, too," she answered, calmly.
"But it's my duty to go—to save Nat from goin' to the dogs."
"You didn't bother about Nat when you were courting me."
"I didn't know where he was, exactly."
"Pooh! Well, if you go you must take me. If you don't, you won't find me or the things when you get back."
This rather alarmed the miserly farmer, and he was half afraid she might sell off all his belongings, and clear out.
"All right, you shall go," he said, at last. "But it's goin' to cost a terrible sight o' money," he added, with a long sigh.