"Folks must take their chance, Charlotte."
"There's no must in it. You are nineteen, Ben Tyrrett's twenty-three; suppose you made up your minds to wait two or three years. You would be quite young enough then: and meanwhile, if both of you laid by, you would have something in hand to meet extra expenses, or sickness if it came."
"Opinions differs," shortly returned Mary Ann. "If folks tell true, you were putting by ever so long for your marriage, and it all ended in smoke. I'd rather make sure of a husband when I can get him."
An expression of pain crossed the face of Charlotte East. "Whether I marry or not," she answered calmly, "I shall be none the worse for having laid money by instead of squandering it. If the best man that ever was born came to me, I would not marry him if we had made no better provision for a rainy day than you and Tyrrett have. What can come of such unions, Mary Ann?"
"It's the way most of us girls do marry," returned Mary Ann.
"And what comes of it, I ask? Blows sometimes, Mary Ann; the workhouse sometimes; trouble always."
"Is it true that you put by, Charlotte?"
"Yes. I put by what I can."
"But how in wonder do you manage it? You dress as well as we do. I'm sure our backs take all our money; father pretty nigh keeps the house."
"I dress better than you in one sense, Mary Ann. I don't have on a silk gown one day and a petticoat in rags the next. No one ever sees me otherwise than neat and clean, and my clothes keep good a long while. It's the finery that runs away with your money. I am not ashamed to make a bonnet last two years; you'd have two in a season. Another thing, Mary Ann: I do not waste my time—I sit to my work; and I dare say I earn double what you do."