Page:Leah Reed--Brenda's summer at Rockley.djvu/292

274 “Oh, he’s beesy now. He ’n a great help to me.”

“Yes,” explained Angelina, “he’s earning two dollars a week, running errands for Mr. Smith. They give him a great many things, too; they say he’s so obliging.”

Angelina never hesitated to express her approval for her younger brother. Apparently she had no jealousy, although his good qualities were in shining contrast with  her own.

“But I thought that you were working, too; don’t you go to the boarding-house regularly? ”

“Well, almost regularly,” said Angelina; “but I did n’t feel just like it to-day. I got a scolding yesterday for breaking some plates, and I just thought I’d show them  to-day that I would n’t put up with it.”

“But that is n’t the way to treat people who have hired you. It may be that they won’t take you back.”

“That’s what I say,” and Mrs. Rosa shrugged her shoulders, as if Angelina were altogether beyond her  control.

Just at this moment the two younger girls, and the boy who was next in age to Manuel, appeared. They had been blackberrying, and their pails showed that they had  been successful.

The three youngsters, freckled and happy, stood before Brenda and Julia too much overwhelmed by the sight of  visitors to say a word for themselves. Angelina had taken their tin pails from them, and busied herself in the kitchen,  while Brenda amused herself with the children. Julia took advantage of this lull in general conversation to