Joseph Stagg was too blunt a person to see his way clear to dodging the question. And he could not speak a falsehood.
“Hum! Well, I’ll tell you, Car’lyn May. There isn’t much left, and that’s a fact. It isn’t your father’s fault. He thought there was plenty. But a business he invested in got into bad hands, and the little nest egg he’d laid up for his family was lost.”
“All lost, Uncle Joe?” quavered Carolyn May.
“All lost,” repeated the hardware merchant firmly.
“Then—then I am just charity. And so’s Prince,” whispered Carolyn May. “I—I s’pose we could go to the poorhouse, Prince and me; but they mayn’t like dogs there.”
“What’s that?” ejaculated Joseph Stagg in a sharp tone. “What’s that?” he repeated.
“I—I know you aren’t just used to children,” went on Carolyn May, somewhat helplessly. “You’re real nice to me, Uncle Joe; but Prince and me—we really are a nuisance to you.”
The man stared at her for a moment in silence, but the flush that dyed his cheeks was a flush of shame. The very word he had used on that fateful day when Carolyn May Cameron had come to The Corners! He had said to himself that she would be a nuisance.
“Maybe we ought to have gone to a poorhouse right at first,” stammered the little girl, when Mr. Stagg broke in on her observation in a voice so rough that she was startled.
“Bless me, child! Who put such an idea into your head?”