"Oh," she said brightly, looking over to Mrs. Champney with a frank smile, "but he has really just begun his career, you know—"
"What do you mean by that?"
"I mean he has just begun honest work among honest men, and that's the best career for him or any other man to my thinking."
"Umph!—little you know about it."
Aileen laughed outright. "Oh, I know more than you think I do, Mrs. Champney. I haven't lived twenty-six years for nothing, and what I've seen, I've seen—and I've no near-sighted eyes to trouble me either; and what I've heard, I've heard, for my ears are good—regular long-distance telephones sometimes."
She was not prepared for the next move on Mrs. Champney's part.
"I believe you would marry him now—after all, if he asked you." She spoke with a sneer.
"Do you really believe it?" She folded her work and prepared to leave the room, for she heard the nurse's step in the hall below. "Well, if you do, I'll tell you something, Mrs. Champney, but I'd like it to be between us." She crossed the room and paused beside the bed.
"What?"
She bent slightly towards her. "I would rather marry a man who earns his three dollars a day at honest work of quarrying or cutting stones,—or breaking them, for that matter,"—she added under her breath, "but I'm not saying he would be any relation of yours—than a man who doesn't know what a day's toil is except to cudgel his brains tired, with contriving the quickest means of making his millions double themselves at other people's expense in twenty-four hours."