“I do. Many times. All I want is a nook and a lead pencil.”
“Daughter, I would like something else better.”
“I wouldn’t. Nothing else. I shall not change my mind even for a knight in helmet and helmet feather.”
Mr. Hammerton’s face was worth another check; he looked down at her from his high stool in a grave, paternal fashion. She remained decorously silent.
“How women do like to spend money,” he said. “At six o’clock you will not have a penny left.”
“How can I? Father is to have a farm in Mayfield, mother is to go to Europe, and Dine is to have diamond ear-rings!”
“And I?”
“I will buy you a month to go fishing! And myself brains enough to write a better book. Isn’t it comical for me to get more for my book than Milton got for Paradise Lost?”
Tessa laughed as she counted her money at tea-time; there was a twenty dollar bill and seventy-five cents! But in her mother’s chamber stood a suite of black-walnut with marble tops, in one of Dine’s drawers, materials for a black and white striped silk, on the sitting-room table a copy of Shakespeare in three Turkey morocco volumes, for her father; she had also sent a gold thimble to Sue Greyson, several volumes of Ruskin to Mr. Hammerton, Barnes on Job to Miss Jewett, and had purchased a ream of foolscap, a pint of ink, a pair of gloves, and The Scarlet Letter for herself!
“Is there any thing left in the world that you want?” her father asked.