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 never let em go, Sabina. When they come in to our funerals I don't want anybody to be ashamed of the Endicotts—it's a gentleman's house."

" 'So I've kept everything up,' I said, 'though many's the time I'd have given the world to let Hannah go, and do for myself, and sell the things, and just get to Europe, and tramp through it, if I had to, like those two teachers from your school. But of course 'twould have been ridiculous—a woman of my age! And I didn't dare take the money for the funeral and if sickness should come, and go with that, for it would break father's heart—he had it all planned out. And of course a woman doesn't need to go—'tisn't as if I were a man—'"

M. Laroche pursed his lips and shook his head thoughtfully.

"But if zat is ze sing you want, what deeference is it zat you are not a man?" he asked luminously.

Miss Sabina threw him a grateful glance.