“Girls?” exclaimed Zoie involuntarily.
“Girls?” repeated Alfred, drawing himself up in the fond conviction that all his heirs were boys, “No wonder your pa's angry. I'd be angry too. Come now,” he said to Maggie, patting the child on the shoulder and regarding her indulgently, “you go straight home and tell your father that what HE needs is BOYS.”
“Well, of course, sir,” answered the bewildered Maggie, thinking that Alfred meant to reflect upon the gender of the offspring donated by her parents, “if you ain't afther likin' girls, me mother sint the money back,” and with that she began to feel for the pocket in her red flannel petticoat.
“The money?” repeated Alfred, in a puzzled way, “what money?”
It was again Zoie's time to think quickly.
“The money for the wash, dear,” she explained.
“Nonsense!” retorted Alfred, positively beaming generosity, “who talks of money at such a time as this?” And taking a ten dollar bill from his pocket, he thrust it in Maggie's outstretched hand, while she was trying to return to him the original purchase money. “Here,” he said to the astonished girl, “you take this to your father. Tell him I sent it to him for his babies. Tell him to start a bank account with it.”
This was clearly not a case with which one small addled mind could deal, or at least, so Maggie decided. She had a hazy idea that Alfred was adding something to the original purchase price of her young sisters, but she was quite at a loss to know how to refuse the offer of such a “grand 'hoigh” gentleman, even though her failure to do so would no doubt result in a beating when she reached home. She stared at Alfred undecided what to do, the money still lay in her outstretched hand.
“I'm afraid Pa'll niver loike it, sir,” she said.
“Like it?” exclaimed Alfred in high feather, and he himself closed her red little fingers over the bill, “he's GOT to like it. He'll GROW to like it. Now you run along,” he concluded to Maggie, as he urged her toward the door, “and tell him what I say.”