“I’m glad to see you, dear Shank,” said careworn Mrs Leather, laying her knitting-needles on the table; “you know I’m always glad to see you, but I’m naturally surprised, for this visit is out of your regular time.”
“Has anything happened?” asked May anxiously. And May looked very sweet, almost pretty, when she was anxious. A year had refined her features, developed her mind and body, and almost converted her into a little woman. Indeed, mentally, she had become more of a woman than many girls in her neighbourhood who were much older. This was in all likelihood one of the good consequences of adversity.
“Ay, May, something has happened,” answered the youth, flinging himself gaily into an arm-chair and stretching out his legs towards the fire; “I have thrown up my situation. Struck work. That’s all.”
“Shank!”
“Just so. Don’t look so horrified, mother; you’ve no occasion to, for I have the offer of a better situation. Besides—ha! ha! old Crossley—close-fisted, crabbed, money-making, skin-flint old Crossley—is going to pray for me. Think o’ that, mother—going to pray for me!”
“Shank, dear boy,” returned his mother, “don’t jest about religious things.”
“You don’t call old Crossley a religious thing, do you? Why, mother, I thought you had more respect for him than that comes to; you ought at least to consider his years!”
“Come, Shank,” returned Mrs Leather, with a deprecating smile, “be a good boy and tell me what you mean—and about this new situation.”
“I just mean that my friend and chum and old schoolfellow Ralph Ritson—jovial, dashing, musical, handsome Ralph—you remember him—has got me a situation in California.”
“Ralph Ritson?” repeated Mrs Leather, with a little sigh and an uneasy glance at her daughter, whose face had flushed at the mention of the youth’s name.