on it. Oh, Joe, did you sell another sketch?” she had seen the money on the table.
“Did I?” said Joe; “just ask the man from Peoria. He got his depot to-day, and he isn’t sure but he thinks he wants another parkscape and a view on the Hudson. What time this afternoon did you burn your hand, Dele?”
“Five o’clock, I think,” said Delia, plaintively. “The iron—I mean the rabbit came off the fire about that time. You ought to have seen Gen. Pinkney, Joe, when———”
“Sit down here a moment, Dele,” said Joe. He drew her to the couch, sat beside her and put his arm across her shoulders.
“What have you been doing for the last two weeks, Dele?” he asked.
She braved it for a moment or two with an eye full of love and stubbornness, and murmured a phrase or two vaguely of Gen. Pinkney; but at length down went her head and out came the truth and tears.
“I couldn’t get any pupils,” she confessed. “And I couldn’t bear to have you give up your lessons; and I got a place ironing shirts in that big Twenty-fourth street laundry. And I think I did very well to make up both General Pinkney and
[66]
