Page:While Caroline Was Growing.djvu/213

 what's money? The Lord knows, Mr. Wortley, I need money more'n you ever will, but let me tell you there's things money can't buy. Can you buy children—nice children like this one—to play with your children? Tell me that!"

"I shall never have any children," the girl's voice came in a husky, strained whisper, "I shall be too—too miserable," she concluded softly, and utterly to herself; she had absolutely forgotten the others, even the boy, whose eyes turned incessantly from her face to the older woman's.

Luella's shrewd glance enveloped the strong young figure. "I never heard 't misery prevented 'em," she said dryly.

The boy seemed unable to move, so intense was the concentration of his thoughts; his fingers stuck out stiffly in a purposeless, set gesture.

"If it is true, all that we thought," he said slowly, "then no hardship, no merely personal suffering should prevent ... the experiment must be made ... must inevitably, sometime...."

"But not with her, not her, Mr. Wortley!"