"She ain't no aunt of mine, I tell you. She ain't nothin' but my mother's stepfather's daughter by his first wife. Sure I want to leave her. She took me because she needed a servant she didn't have to pay reg'lar wages to. I don't owe her nothin'. Nor him, neither. He's worse 'n her."
"They are not kind to you?"
"No, they ain't what you'd call kind to me. But you ain't come here to talk about them, I take it. What was you wantin' to see me about, Mister?"
"Suppose," said he, leaning forward, "that you should be offered, in exchange for this," his gesture damned the whole room, "a beautiful home, travel, culture, ease, all that makes life beautiful; would that offer appeal to you?" He looked at her earnestly.
"No housework, no cooking! Clothes made for me especial? Not hand-me-downs an' left-overs? No kids to mind, neither day nor night?"
"Housework? Old clothes? Minding children? Certainly not! I am not hiring a servant! What are you thinking of?"
"I'm thinkin' of me, that's what I'm thinkin' of! I'm wearin' her old clothes on Sundays now. I hate 'em. They look like her an' they smell like her and they feel like her—mean an' ugly an' tight. If I could ever get enough money o' my own together, an' enough clothes—" she stopped, and looked at him with the sudden ferocity that at times flashed out in her—"earned honest, though, and come by respectable," said she, grimly, "then I'd get out o' here an' try something else. I'm strong, an' if I had half a chanst I could earn my livin' easy enough."
His jaw hardened. He couldn't blind himself to the fact that he was disappointed in Milly's niece; so disappointed that he felt physically sick. Had he been less fanatical, less obstinate, less fixed upon his monomaniacal purpose, he would have settled a sufficient sum upon her, and gone his way. His disappointment, so far from turning him aside, hardened his determination to carry the thing through. He had so acutely felt the lack of money himself, that now, perhaps, he overestimated its power. Whatever money could accomplish for this girl, money should do. The zeal of the reformer gathered in him.
"I wish," he explained, "to adopt you—in a sense. I have no children, and it is my desire that you should bear the Champneys name—for your Aunt Milly's sake. I propose, then, to take you away from these surroundings, and to educate you as a lady bearing the name of Champneys should be educated. You will have to study, and to work hard. You will have to obey orders instantly and implicitly. Do you follow me?"
"As far as you go," said she, cautiously. "Go on: I'm waitin' to hear more."