“And where would you draw the line?” she asked, with assumed calmness.
Mr. Morehall did not know Berty well. His family, though one of the highest respectability, moved in another circle. If he had had the pleasure of an intimate acquaintance with the energetic young person before him, he would have known that her compressed lips, her half-closed eyes, and her tense forehead betokened an overwhelming and suppressed anger.
Therefore, unaware of the drawn sword suspended over his head, he went on, unsuspiciously. “To tell the truth, I think there’s a lot in heredity. Now there are some families you never find scrabbling round for something to eat. I never heard of a poor Gravely, or a Travers, or a Stanisfield, or a Morehall. It’s in the blood to get on. No one can down you.”
He paused consequentially, and Berty, biting her lip, waited for him to go on. However, happening to look at the clock, he stopped short. This talk was interesting, but he would like to get back to business.
“Mr. Morehall,” said Berty, in a still voice, “do you know that there are a legion of poor Traverses up in the northern part of the State, that Grandma used to send boxes to every month?”
“No,” he said, in surprise, “I never heard that.”
“And old Mr. Stanisfield took two of his own cousins out of the poorhouse three years ago, and supports them?”
“You astonish me,” murmured the confused man.
“And, moreover,” continued Berty, with a new gleam in her eye, “since you have been frank with me, I may be frank with you, and say that two of the people for whom I want River Street made sweet and wholesome are old Abner Morehall and his wife, from Cloverdale.”