“Yet thousands of poor girls work for and live on less, my peerless sister. You, who know no want that is not supplied almost as soon as expressed, know little how poor girls and women have to struggle to keep their heads above the tide. But my heroine is better off now. I have given her other work, and raised her salary to ten dollars a week.”
“Good! good! You have some heart after all, Ned.”
“I begin to think I have,” said Mr. W——, with a sigh.
“Here! here! No nonsense, brother mine. Don’t make a fool of yourself by falling in love with your pretty employee. She may be very pretty, very modest, and good, but I don’t want a bindery girl for a sister-in-law. Remember that.”
Mr. W——’s answer was another sigh. He seemed lost in thought, and, as he had promised the opera tickets, Flotie left him to his thoughts, and went to tell Anna about her brother’s new discovery, as well as to announce that they were to hear “Lucia” on the coming Monday night.
“Do you think Brother Edward is really in love with this shop-girl?” asked Anna, in a serious tone, when Flotie had told her story.
“I think he is a little smitten, but seriously in love—no. Not a bit of it. Edward is too much engrossed in business to fall in love in good earnest. He hasn’t leisure for that. Besides, he has too much sense to ever think of marrying for beauty, and out of his own sphere, too. There are rich girls who would snap at him for the asking.”
“Flotie, love—real love—laughs at riches.”
“May be so, Anna; but love—real love, as you call it—never—scorns a diamond engagement-ring, nor refuses to wear satin and Valenciennes lace for a wedding suit. Where would the bindery girl on four, or even ten dollars a week, find them?”
“Ned would find them for her fast enough, if he loved her. But say, Flotie, what will we wear on Monday night? That is the question for the hour. You know the creme de la creme of society will be there, and we must uphold the family credit.”