"It was very kind and good of you. I have not many friends, Mr. Money; but I am afraid the word 'interests' is rather too large for any affairs of mine. Have I any interests? Mary Blanchet understands all my affairs much better than I do."
"Yes, they may be called interests, I think. You know that anybody who likes can find out everything about people's wills, and all that. Do you know anything about your father's will?"
"No," Minola said, with a start, and feeling the tears coming to her eyes. "I don't, Mr. Money. At least, not much. I know that he left me some money—so much every year; not much—it would not be much for Lucy—but enough for me and Mary Blanchet. Mary Blanchet manages it for me, and makes it go twice as far as I could. We never spend it all—I mean, we haven't spent it all this year. I should never be able to manage or to get on at all only for her."
Minola spoke with eagerness now, for she was afraid that she was about to receive some of the advice which worldly people call wise, and to be admonished of the improvidence of sharing her little purse with Mary Blanchet.
"And, indeed, I ought to do something for her—something particular," she hastened to add, for she was seized with a sudden fear that Mr. Money might have heard somewhere of her resolve to have Mr. Blanchet's poems printed at her own expense, and might proceed to remonstrate with her.
Mr. Money smiled, seeing completely through her, and only thinking to himself that she was a remarkably good girl, and that he much wished he had a son to marry her.
"Do you know what I was thinking of?" he asked bluntly.
"I am sure you were thinking about me, for you laughed—at my ignorance of business ways, I suppose?"
"Not at all; I was thinking that I should like to have a son, and that I should like you to marry him."
Minola laughed and colored, but took his words as they were meant, in all good humor and kindness.