“Awful easy. I’m mad ’most all the time. You see, I’m kind of sickly, an’ I hevn’t much relish for what I eats, an’ nothin’ makes you mad like pickin’ at yer food.”
“Poor child!” said the Judge, sympathetically.
“But I’m goin’ to be a lady,” she said, and her little sharp face hardened, “if I lives. If I dies it don’t matter.”
She was silent for a few seconds, being employed in a search among her patched and darned but clean garments for a rag of a handkerchief, as white as the morsel of linen peeping from the Judge’s own pocket.
“And what steps have you taken in the matter?” inquired the Judge, knowing that he was expected to take an interest in this question of ladyhood.
“Fust of all, I’ve quit work,” she replied. “What air you laughin’ at?” for the Judge was unable to conceal his amusement.
“Just at the idea of a lazy lady,” he replied; “go on, please.”
“Did I say I was goin’ to be lazy?” she returned, fiercely. “I’ve just stopped shopgirlin’ it, but I’m a-studyin’ like sixty.”
“O, going to school?”
“Yes, sir. Onct before I went, before I got into Moses & Brown’s big Dry Goods Emporium—all the latest fashions in ladies’ neckwear, underwear, street wear, house wear, weddin’ wear, funeral wear, summer wear, winter wear, an’ so on.”