“So you dragged her out, did ye? ’Tain’t exactly in your line neither, doin’ that sort o’ thing. Ye must a-thought that gal worth savin’.”
“She ain’t worth savin’ now,” broke in Papa, hastily. “She’s a stone around our necks.”
“That’s a fact,” said Mamma. “An’ it’s all in consequence of that white-faced charity tramp’s meddlin’ we’ve got to get out of here, an’ we’ll be tracked wherever we go by that drunken gal’s bein’ along.”
“Well, ye ain’t obliged ter take her, are ye?” queried Franz, as if this part of the subject rather bored him. “Your keepin’ her looks all rot to me. She ain’t good for nothin’ that I kin see, only to spoil good whiskey.”
Papa and Mamma exchanged glances, and then Papa said:
“Jest so, my boy; she spoils good whiskey, but she’s safer so than without it. We kin afford to keep her better than we kin afford to turn her loose.”
“D’ye mean ter say,” queried Franz, “that if that gal knew anything, she’d know too much?”
“That’s about it, my boy.”
Franz gave vent to a low whistle. “So,” he said; “an’ that’s why ye keep her full o’ drugged liquor, eh? I’ll lay a pipe that’s the old woman’s scheme. Have I hit the mark, say?”
“Yes, Franzy.”