“Has she really kept that Colson girl with her all these years?” Yes, she has. I speak it meekly, but she has! “And never had her learn a trade, or work in a factory, or learn to support herself in any way?” She has never sent her anywhere to learn a trade or to work in a factory or to stand behind a counter. It is too true.
No, I was almost sure you did not approve of it. But, for all that, I don't mean to argue Mrs. Roberts' cause. “To her own Master she standeth or falleth.”
Not but what Mrs. Roberts has argued, on occasion,—with Gracie Dennis, for instance, who paid her a few weeks' visit, less than three months after she first went home.
“Flossy,” she would say, “what are you going to do—with the girl? Do you really mean to keep her here?”
“She has no mother, my child, nor father; and her brother is not able to care for her yet. Where would you have me send her?”
“Why, Flossy, there are places.”
“Yes, my dear, I know it, and this is one of them.”
“Well, but she ought to be learning things. How is she going to support herself?”
“She is studying arithmetic with me, you know, and writing and reading with the dining-room girls; and I am teaching her music, and Mr. Roberts proposes to have her join the history class as soon as she is sufficiently advanced in the more common studies.”
“But, Flossy Shipley, that is great nonsense! You know what I mean. You cannot turn the world upside down in that fashion, or make an orphan asylum of your house or a charity school.”