When Austin came home that evening it was to face the angriest girl he had ever seen. She was fairly bursting with indignation. Her black eyes snapped and her face was red with suppressed emotion.
“Austin, Austin, what do you think! Oh, it is too awful that he would be so mean! Papa gave me a little, old, ten-dollar bill! Think of it, after all my plans, and he knows how much I need. I told him at the first it would take all of fifty to get the things we really need. And he gave this as though he was doing me a great favor,” and the girl, unable longer to suppress her emotions, burst into a torrent of sobs, and tears.
Austin stood without saying a word, looking at her. He felt stunned. Though he had long ago lost faith in his father, yet he had not thought he would be so contemptible as this showed him to be. His pity as well as his love for the child before him was unbounded, and he sought with all the tender words he could think of to comfort her. He promised to add a little to the ten so that she might get a few of the things she had hoped for, but he knew it was not much that he could do.
“No, Austin, I might as well give up the trip. With the little dab I would have I could do nothing. Oh, I wanted to throw it in his face!” and a fresh burst of sobs drowned her voice.
“Nell, you will not disappoint me like that. I have counted so much on your company. Please say that you will go anyway, and I will go to Papa and see if I can get him to do better,” pleaded Austin. “Well, but he will not do any more. I know he will not,” she said. With a hasty look upward to the One who can give grace to calm the turbulent soul, Austin went to confer with his father. He set the matter before him in all its pathos.
“Nell has worked hard, and been such a faithful housekeeper. She is not wanting to buy extravagantly, and she ought to have all that she has asked. I can’t do any more, and I can hardly bear to see her so disappointed. Can you not do better by her now?” he had pleaded, humbling his own spirit in the asking, for he would rather have gone bungry and cold than to have asked his father for a cent. But his plea only succeeded in making his parent angry.
“You are both as ungrateful as you can be. The idea of a girl not being satisfied with ten dollars to go off on a shopping-tour. She needs to come down a bit. And if this is the way you appreciate what I do for you, I shall pull out of here and leave you to yourselves. Do not think I shall give another penny for any such a purpose.”
And, suiting his action to his word, Henry Hill began making himself ready for his departure from the roof of his ungrateful children.
Austin went back to Nell to tell her that he had been successful only in making his father angry.
“Let him be angry, and let him go. I do not care,” she said spitefully.