'Earned them!' Josephine's beautiful eyes were full of surprise, of admiration even, as she now fixed them on her brother. 'I wish I could earn anything—a row of pins, or a loaf of bread.'
'If you did, you wouldn't eat all the loaf yourself. But I spent all my wage on myself, you see! But I did earn them—at least, I'm going to, before I get through.'
'How in the world did you do it, Paul?'
'I am a tutor, Josephine,' said he, with mock gravity. She answered, earnestly:
'You're a good fellow, any way, tutor or not. It's a secret, then, this business?'
'Yes, the deadest kind of a dead secret. But I shall tell you. I made a mental reservation of you. August Scheffer——'
Josephine started, trembled, looked away from Paul, recovered herself in an instant; then looked back again, and straight into his eyes. Paul saw nothing strange in this; he went on quietly:
'Scheffer is getting ambitious! If I had a shop and such a business as his, catch me bothering about books!'
'He was always fond of reading,' answered Josephine. 'You know what a reader his mother was? No, you don't know. You were too young. Well, he wants you to help him, and you are to be shod.'
'Yes, that's the whole of it. Why don't you laugh, or be surprised. I shall do my best with him.'