There's money enough to take me where I
want to go."
"Whee-w! Thunder and jimson root! Wher'd ye git that? Didn't dig
it out of a hole?"
"No. I jest saved it-a dime at a time-see?"
Here she turned it out on the table-some bills, but mostly silver
dimes and quarters.
"Thunder and scissors! Must be two er three hundred dollars
there," stared he.
"They's jest seventy-five dollars and thirty cents; jest about enough
to go back on. Tickets is fifty-five dollars, goin' an' comin'. That
leaves twenty dollars for other expenses, not countin' what I've
already spent, which is six-fifty," said she, recovering her
self-possession. "It's plenty."
"But y' ain't calc'lated on no sleepers nor hotel bills."
"I ain't goin' on no sleeper. Mis' Doudney says it's jest scandalous
the way things is managed on them cars. I'm goin' on the
old-fashioned cars, where they ain't no half-dressed men runain'
around."
"But you needn't be afraid of them, Mother; at your age-"
"There! you needn't throw my age an' homeliness into my face,
Ethan Ripley. If I hadn't waited an' tended on you so long, I'd look
a little more's I did when I married yeh."
Ripley gave it up in despair.
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