“Hetty,” 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-book). “Here’s my grocer’s bill—two shillings
for tea, and three shillings for sugar; can’t you do without 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; ’tis n’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 alms-house; 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.