Page:Emma Speed Sampson--The shorn lamb.djvu/61

Rh trousers. "I was saying that Silas Johnson and his descendants have done much more for their country than we Taylors. By Gad! If I had a grandchild I'd leave it everything I possess. I don't see what is the matter with the bunch of you. Effete, aristocratic blood has been diluting our good miller's stock for generations. Here I was, the only child of my parents. To be sure, I managed better than my immediate forbears, but what good did it do to have four children if it stops right there? You girls are over thirty, and Spot, here, is twenty-four. What is the matter with the men and the maids? Where are the county beaux and belles? Is nobody good enough for the likes of you, or is everybody too good?"

Myra and Evelyn looked shocked and uncomfortable during this tirade and Spot became more sullen. He wanted to marry, meant to many some day, but up to that time had seen no one who appealed alike to him and to his family. When his father died he intended to suit himself in a wife, and she would not be any highfaluting, prissy person whom his sisters would choose, but some farmer's daughter who would not be forever insisting upon his mending his manners! He had his eye on just such a girl—little Betsy Bolling, whose home, "The