"Nelly—do not make me vain."
"As for you, Miss Kennedy, there is no man fit for you in all the world. You call yourself a dressmaker, but we know better; oh, you are a lady! My father says so. He used to have great ladies sometimes on board his ship. He says that never was any one like you for talk and manner. Oh, we don't ask your secret, if you have one—only some of us (not I, for one) are afraid that some day you will go away, and never come back to us again. What should we do then?"
"My dear, I shall not desert you."
"And, if you marry him, you will remain with us? A lady should marry a gentleman, I know; she could not marry any common man. But you are, so you tell us, only a dressmaker. And he, he says, only a cabinet-maker; and Dick Coppin says that, though he can use the lathe, he knows nothing at all about the trade—not even how they talk, nor anything about them. If you two have secrets, Miss Kennedy, tell them to each other."
"My secrets, if I have any, are very simple, Nelly, and very soon you shall know them; and, as for his, I know them already."
Angela was silent awhile, thinking over this thing; then she kissed the girl, and whispered: "Patience yet a little while, dear Nelly. Patience, and I will do, perhaps, what you desire."
"Father," said Nelly, later on that night, sitting together by the fire, "father, I spoke to Miss Kennedy to-night."
"What did you speak to her about, my dear?"
"I told her that we knew (you and I) that she is a lady, whatever she may pretend."