What Will People Say? A Novel

by Rupert Hughes

"Two rooms!" Persis gasped again. "And your mother's house has thirty! Two rooms? Why, where will the servants sleep?"

"We sha'n't have any servants," Alice averred, stoutly.

And her husband-to-be protested: "No, Alice, I'll never let you soil your pretty hands with work."

Persis pressed the point. "But really, now, what about food?"

"You can do Wonders with a chafing-dish," said Alice.

"And a chafing-dish can do wonders with a stomach," said Persis. "Bread and cheese—that is to say, Welsh rabbits—and kisses as a steady diet?" She shook her head.

Alice made another try. "Well, everybody says you can buy almost everything in cans."

"Including ptomaines. Oh, children, you don't know what's in store for you."

"Of course we shall have hardships," Stowe confessed; "but nothing can be worse than this uncertainty, this separation."

"Oh yes, it can, Stowe!" Persis cried. "There are harder things to bear than the things we lose, and they are the things we can't lose."