Arrange! And that girl had kept this niggardly account of it! For Minnie's trip to the Yosemite—and what was this?—for his raisin experiment—for the new horse they simply had to have for the drying apparatus that year he lost so much money in apricots—and for the spraying materials—yes, he could not deny the items, and they covered that $1,164.00 exactly.
Then came the deadly balance, of the account between them:
Her labor . . . $2,047.00
Her board . . . $936.00
Her "cash advanced" . . . $1,164.00
————-
$4,147.00
His expense for her . . . $3,600
————-
Due her from him . . . $547.00
Diantha revolved her pencil between firm palms, and looked at him rather quizzically; while her mother rocked and darned and wiped away an occasional tear. She almost wished she had not kept accounts so well.
Mr. Bell pushed the papers away and started to his feet.
"This is the most shameful piece of calculation I ever saw in my life," said he. "I never heard of such a thing! You go and count up in cold dollars the work that every decent girl does for her family and is glad to! I wonder you haven't charged your mother for nursing her?"
"You notice I haven't," said Diantha coldly.
"And to think," said he, gripping the back of a chair and looking down at her fiercely, "to think that a girl who can earn nine hundred dollars a year teaching school, and stay at home and do her duty by her family besides, should plan to desert her mother outright—now she's old and sick! Of course I can't stop you! You're of age, and children nowadays have no sense of natural obligation after they're grown up. You can go, of course, and disgrace the family as you propose—but you needn't expect to have me consent to it or approve of it—or of you. It's a shameful thing—and you are an unnatural daughter—that's all I've got to say!"
Mr. Bell took his hat and went out—a conclusive form of punctuation much used by men in discussions of this sort.