There you go, `Flower-Girls'! Turn your silly faces to the wall and smile and cry there till I'm gone and somebody throws you on a bonfire.I'LLnever look at you again." He paused, with the canvas half turned."And yet," he went on, reflectively, "a man promised me thirty-five dollars for that picture once.I painted it to order, but he went away before I finished it, and never answered the letters I wrote him about it.I wish I had the money now--perhaps we could have more than two meals a day.""We don't need more," said Ariel, scraping the palette attentively."It's healthier with only breakfast and supper.I think I'd rather have a new dress than dinner.""I dare say you would," the old man mused.
"You're young--you're young.What were you doing all this afternoon, child?""In my room, trying to make over mamma's wedding-dress for to-night.""To-night?"1
"I don't think I'll be very gay," she answered.
"I don't know why I go--nobody ever asks me to dance.""Why not?" he asked, with an old man's astonishment.
"I don't know.Perhaps it's because I don't dress very well." Then, as he made a sorrowful gesture, she cut him off before he could speak.
"Oh, it isn't altogether because we're poor; it's more I don't know how to wear what I've got, the way some girls do.I never cared much and--well, I'M not worrying, Roger! And I think I've done a good deal with mamma's dress.It's a very grand dress.I wonder I never thought of wearing it until to-day.I may be"--she laughed and blushed --"I may be the belle of the ball--who knows!""You'll want me to walk over with you and come for you afterwards, I expect.""Only to take me.It may be late when Icome away--if a good many SHOULD ask me to dance, for once! Of course I could come home alone.But Joe Louden is going to sort of hang around outside, and he'll meet me at the gate and see me safe home.""Oh!" he exclaimed, blankly.
"Isn't it all right?" she asked.
"I think I'd better come for you," he answered, gently."The truth is, I--I think you'd better not be with Joe Louden a great deal.""Why?""Well, he doesn't seem a vicious boy to me, but I'm afraid he's getting rather a bad name, my dear.""He's not getting one," she said, gravely."He's already got one.He's had a bad name in Canaan for a long while.It grew in the first place out of shabbiness and mischief, but it did grow; and if people keep on giving him a bad name the time will come when he'll live up to it.He's not any worse than I am, and I guess my own name isn't too good--for a girl.And yet, so far, there's nothing against him except his bad name.""I'm afraid there is," said Roger."It doesn't look very well for a young man of his age to be doing no better than delivering papers.""It gives him time to study law," she answered, quickly."If he clerked all day in a store, he couldn't.""I didn't know he was studying now.I thought I'd heard that he was in a lawyer's office for a few weeks last year, and was turned out for setting fire to it with a pipe--""It was an accident," she interposed.