Page:Hard-pan; a story of bonanza fortunes (IA hardpanbonanza00bonnrich).pdf/250

238 Viola pushed back from the table, her face suddenly suffused with an angry red.

"No—no!" she cried violently. "Don't think of such a thing—don't suggest it! I don't want to see that gentleman again, ever. This is my affair, Mrs. Cassidy; leave it to me."

She rose from the table and walked to the window.

"There 's no use gettin' mad about it," retorted the other, somewhat tartly, rising from the rocker and setting the tea-things on the tray. "I 'm only tryin' to do the best I can for you. And it don't seem to me just right for a girl like you, young and not over-strong, to be knockin' round this way, when she 's got friends ready to black her boots for her. Still, it 's your funeral, not mine."

There was no reply, and as she lifted the tray she said in an aggrieved tone:

"I don't want to hurt no one's feelin's, but I want to do my dooty in this world. Well, good night, deary. Don't get down on your luck. You 're not so friendless as you think."

After she had left the room, Viola stood motionless, looking out of the window on the gray and soot-grimed back yard. Night was falling, and the washing, still pendulating on its lines after the slovenly fashion of the neighborhood, gleamed white and ghostly through the dusk. A high brick wall shut off the end