“Do you, uncle? Oh, I’d like to,” cried the boy, hastening to obey.
“It strikes me that you are growing out of your clothes, laddie,” his uncle remarked, with a scrutinizing glance down at Harry as they walked briskly along the street.
“Yes, sir,” Harry returned, blushing, “I can’t help growing fast, and of course Ethel can’t make enough money to be always buying new clothes for me. But I can stand it,” he added cheerfully, “and I hope one of these days I’ll be able to make enough to dress myself and all my sisters, too.”
“Great expectations, my boy,” his uncle said with a smile; “but if you make use of all your advantages I dare say they may be realized some day. And by the way, Harry, if you do make yourself fit for the place, I’ll take you into the store one of these days, should you happen to fancy the business.”
“Oh, uncle, will you?” cried the boy. “I’d like it so much, and I’ll try my very best to qualify myself for it.”
While this conversation was going on between Mr. Eldon and Harry, Blanche was giving Nannette a detailed account of the doings of that afternoon—her calling in of the doctor, the visit she had afterward paid to her uncles at their place of business and their Uncle Albert’s call upon them, his talk with Ethel and then with herself as she conducted him over the house. Nannette listened to it all with intense interest, then, after a moment’s silence, burst out:
“It’s just too bad that Uncle Albert doesn’t know how Ethel and I were always treated by his daughters—as if we weren’t their equals; if he did he wouldn’t blame Ethel for trying to make a home for us and herself. But she couldn’t tell him, of course.”
“No, no, indeed! I’m sure neither Ethel nor any of the rest of us would be willing to give him the pain of knowing about it; yet it does seem right hard that for that reason we can’t show him the reasonableness of our desire for a home of our very own.”
“Yes,” sighed Nannette, “it does seem hard, because it looks as if we were ungrateful to him for all his kindness; but maybe some day they’ll feel sorry for treating us so and tell him of it themselves.”
“I hope so,” said Blanche, but her tone and the accompanying sigh seemed to indicate that the hope was but faint.