"I wonder will we ever be rich like the senator?"
"Certainly," he answered with calm conviction. "A man couldn't be
shiftless with you to do for, Hannah. He'd be obliged to have
everything the best."
"It'll take a long while though," she continued.
"We will have to put in some hard licks," he admitted. "But we are
young; we've got a life to do it in."
"A man has, but I don't know about girls. It seems like they get old
faster; and then things--silk dresses don't do them any good. How would
ma look in fashionable clothes!"
"You won't have to wait that long," he assured her. "Your father has
never hurt himself about the place, there's no money in sheep; and as
for Hosmer--you know well as me that he is nothing outside of the bank
and his own comfort. Store clothes is Hosmer all through."
"I wish you were a little like him there," Hannah returned.
He admitted that this evening he was more untidy than need be. "I just
couldn't wait to see you," he declared; "with our place and--and all so
safe and happy."
II
The Braley table, spread after the Greenstream custom in the kitchen,
was surrounded by Richmond and Calvin--Hosmer had stayed late at the
bank--Hannah and Susan, the eldest of the children, prematurely aged
and wasted by a perpetual cough, while Lucy Braley moved carelessly
between the stove and the table. At rare intervals she was assisted by
Hannah, who bore the heavy dishes in a silent but perceptible air of
protest.
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