“Betsey,” said my uncle, “we shall want you at home now. It will be
impossible for me to get along without you, unless I hire a hand, and
times are too hard for that: so you must leave school. You’ve a good
home here, for which you ought to be thankful, as I’ve told you before;
but you must work, girl, work! Some how or other the money goes;” (and
he pulled out the old pocket-bock;) “here’s my grocer’s bill--two
shillings for tea, and three shillings for sugar; can’t you do with out
sugar, Hetty? And here’s a dollar charged for a pair of India rubbers.
A dollar is a great deal of money, Hetty; more than you could earn in
a month. And here’s a shilling for a comb; now that’s useless, you
might cut your hair off. It won’t do--won’t do. I had no idea of the
additional expense when I took you in. Josiah ought to have left you
something no man has a right to leave his children for other people to
support; ’tisn’t Christian. I’ve been a professor these twenty years,
and I ought to know. I don’t know as you have any legal claim on me
because you are my niece. Josiah was thriftless and extravagant. I
suppose ’tis in your blood, too, for I can’t find out that you have
begun to pay your way by any chores you have done here. If you must
live on us, (and I can’t say that I see the necessity,) I repeat, I
wish you had been born a boy.”
“But as I am not a boy, Uncle, and as I do not wish to be a burthen
to you, will you tell me how to support myself?”
“Don’t ask me. I’m sure I don’t know. That is your business. I have
my hands full to attend to my own affairs. I am deacon of the church,
beside being trustee of the Sandwich Island Fund. I don’t get a copper
for the office of deacon; nobody pays _me_ for handing round the
contribution box; not a cent of the money that passes through my hands
goes into my till; not a _mill_ do I have by way of perquisite, for
doling it out to bed-ridden Widow Hall, or asthmatic Mr. Price. Not
a penny the richer was I, for that twenty dollars I collected in the
contribution box at last communion: no, I am a poor man, comparatively
speaking. I may die yet in the almshouse; who knows? You must work,
girl, work; can’t have any drones in my hive.”
A shadow just then passed the window. I should know that retreating
footstep! Could it be that Master Grey had come to the door with the
intention of calling, and overheard my uncle? At least, then, I was
spared the humiliation of exposing his parsimony.