"Yes," said her father with a nod and a sigh. "If I assign, it would all have to go, and we should have to begin afresh."
"Very well. I am ready. Of course, I don't want to be broke; but I am ready. Whatever you think is right. And I would rather give up everything—everything, than have you worried as you have been for ever so long. I have seen it."
"Nelly, you are a brick," said her father fondly, looking at her in admiration. "How did you ever happen to be your Aunt Sophy's niece?"
"Her half-niece," corrected the girl, smiling.
"It was the other half," mused Mr. Leigh.
"Tell me about it, father. How did it come? When did it happen?" she urged, smoothing tenderly the hair on his brow.
"It didn't happen. It came. It has been coming for a long time. It is the conditions——"
"I know, those dreadful conditions. How I hate to hear the word! We used to get them when we were at Miss de Pense's school,—we had to work them off—and now people are always talking about them."
"Well, these conditions," said Mr. Leigh smiling, "seem a little more difficult to work off. I am rated as belonging to the capitalists and as opposed to the working class. The fact is I am not a capitalist; for my properties are good only while in active use, all my available surplus has gone into their betterment for the public use, and I am a harder-worked man than any laborer or workman in one of my shops or on one of my lines."
"That you are!" exclaimed his daughter.