"Sallykin, what a madcap you are! You don't care what you say."
"We-e-ell! there's nothing in that.... But look here, mammy darling. Did that good woman in all she said to-night—all the time she was jawing—did she once lose sight of her meritorious attitude?"
"It may only be a façon de parler—a sort of habit."
"But it isn't. Jeremiah says so. We've talked it over, us two. He says he wouldn't like his daughter—meaning me—to marry poor Prosy, because of the Goody."
"Are you sure he meant you? Did you ask him?"
"No, because I wasn't going to twit Jeremiah with being only step. We kept it dark who was what. But, of course, he meant me. Like a submarine telegraph." Sally stopped a moment in gravity. Then she said: "Mother dear!"
"What, kitten?"
"What a pity it is Jeremiah is only step! Just think how nice if he'd been real. Now, if you'd only met twenty years sooner...."
A nettle to grasp presented itself—a bad one. Rosalind seized it bodily. "I shouldn't have had my kitten," she said.
"I see. I should have been somebody else. But that wouldn't have mattered to me."