“How much is it, Marie?” asked Carroll.
“Tree mont vage, Mr. Captain,” answered Marie, eagerly, “I haf not had.”
Carroll took out his pocket-book and gave her a ten-dollar note.
Marie reached out for it eagerly, but her face fell a little. “It is tree mont, Mr. Captain,” she ventured.
“That is all I can spare to-night, Marie,” said Carroll, quite sternly. “That will have to answer to-night.”
Marie smiled again, eying him timidly. “Yes, it will my dress get for the ball, Mr. Captain.”
Marie stood framed in her wild cucumber-vine, regarding the captain with her pretty ingratiation, but not another smile she got. Carroll strolled around to the front of the house, and in a second the carriage rolled around from the stable. Marie nodded to the coachman; there was never a man of her acquaintance but she had a pretty, artless salutation always ready for him. She shook her ten-dollar note triumphantly at him, and laughed with delight.
“Got money,” said she. Marie had a way of ending up her words, especially those ending in y, as if she finished them up with a kiss. She pursed up her lips, and gave a most fascinating little nip to her vowels, which, as a rule, she sounded short. “Money,” said she again, and the ten-dollar note fluttered like a green leaf from between the large thumb and forefinger of her coarse right hand.
The coachman laughed back in sympathy. He was still smiling when he drove up beside his employer at the front-door. He leaned from his seat just as the flutter of the ladies' dresses appeared at the front-door, and said something to Carroll, with a look of pleased expectation. That money in Marie's hand had cheered him on his own account.
Carroll looked at him gently imperturbable. “I am sorry, Martin. I shall be obliged to ask you to wait a few days,” he said, with the utmost courtesy.