“But I should,” she persisted. “Why not? she is the only creature on earth that cares a straw for me; why should I not work for her?”
“What are you trying to make me say?” asked Louis, very pale, but still smiling; “something that you can laugh at me for afterwards? That is not worthy of you, Pinkie.”
“I don’t see what right you have to call me that!” cried the girl, springing to her feet in sudden anger at the calm superiority of his tone.
“You seemed, some way, to give me the right,” said the young man simply; “but I beg your pardon; I will be more careful. And now I have something to say to you, Miss Randolph. Ever since you returned, your manner to me has been as if I were some presumptuous upstart whom you were obliged to keep in his place. And I want to tell you that I know my place quite well; I am a shoemaker and an employé of ‘Prices’; so you may spare yourself any further trouble in the matter.”
“But you were that when I went away,” murmured Pinkie, lifting her eyes to his for just a moment.
He took one step towards her, then checked himself. “That was before you had learned your place,” he said.
Pinkie’s eyes filled with tears; for as yet her love for Louis was the most real part of her character, and when she yielded to it for a moment, as at present, it made her, for the time being, as real as itself.
“My place!” she said, looking at him with the bright drops gemming her lashes; “my place? Oh, Louis, what place have I in the world? I am only a trouble to my father: he thinks himself bound to give me what he calls social advantages, but it’s an awful nuisance to him; he was much more comfortable when I was at school. Frank certainly doesn’t want me or care for me very much. Freddy”—her voice was choked with sobs.
“Yes,” said Louis hoarsely, “Freddy loved you, Pinkie.”
“But he is dead,” cried the girl passionately, “and now you, Louis—you, whom I thought my—my friend, you turn against me!”