“No.”
“Well, he bought it; and he wants me to take charge of it.”
“And shall you?”
“Do you think I’m fit for it?”
“I? How should I know?”
“You don’t know cotton; but you know me a little. Do I strike you as fit for anything?” She made no reply to this, and he laughed. “I assure you I felt small enough when I heard what you had done, and thought—what I had done. It gave me a start; and I wrote my father that night that I would go in for it.”
“I once thought of going to a factory town,” she answered, without wilful evasion, “to begin my practice there among the operatives’ children. I should have done it if it had not been for coming here with Mrs. Maynard. It would have been better.”
“Come to my factory town, Miss Breen! There ought to be fevers there in the autumn, with all the low lands that I’m allowed to flood Mrs. Maynard told me about your plan.”
“Pray, what else did Mrs. Maynard tell you about me?”
“About your taking up a profession, in the way you did, when you needn’t, and when you didn’t particularly like it.”