Читать книгу Hard-Pan. A Story of Bonanza Fortunes онлайн

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“Nevertheless,” said Gault, “it seems to me that a woman who was high-minded and proud and independent would be a shop-girl and live on seven dollars a week rather than—”

He stopped. Letitia looked at him interestedly, struck by something in his tone.

“Rather than what?” she asked.

“Rather than—well, in this story the people who were so poor had friends that were well off, and all that sort of thing, and they borrowed from them, and—I think it’s going to turn out that they lived that way.”

“Did the girl borrow? Wouldn’t work and lived on the borrowed money? Oh, that’s—!”

Letitia raised both hands in the air and let them drop with a gesture that expressed complete finality of interest and approval.

“What do you mean by ‘oh,’ Letitia?” he said, rather sharply. “I never said the girl knew anything about it.”

“Well, she must have had some curiosity to know where the money came from. When her father or mother came in and said, ‘Here’s ten dollars to pay the butcher, and here’s twenty dollars to pay the grocer,’ don’t you suppose she wanted to know where it came from? Really, John, considering you’re supposed to be so clever, you don’t know much about women.”