"Bless your heart!" Fox exclaimed under his breath. "Bless your dear heart, Sally! You needn't go out scrubbing or washing dishes or selling papers or anything of the kind. You can do better than that. And your mother is likely to need your help about as much when you are fitted for teaching as she does now."
"Is—isn't mother getting better?" asked Sally, hesitating.
"Yes," said Fox, "but very slowly; very slowly indeed. Doctor Galen thinks it will be some years before she is herself again. Think, Sally, how much better it will be for you to be getting ready. Suppose she was well now. What would you and she do? How would the conditions be different?"
Sally murmured something about taking boarders.
"Well," Fox observed, "I never have taken 'em and so I have no experience with that end of it. But Henrietta and I have been boarding for a good many years now—ever since mother died—and we have seen a good deal of all kinds of boarders. On the average, they seem to be an unmannerly and ungrateful lot. Don't you be a party to making 'em worse, Sally. Don't you do it."
Sally laughed.
"Besides," he went on, "it's pretty apt to be humiliating."
"I suppose that's something unpleasant," Sally said quietly, "and, of course, it wouldn't be pleasant. I shouldn't expect it to be."
"I don't believe there's any money in it."
Sally paused a moment to digest that phrase. Then she sighed.