dropped her voice hurriedly. "To live here and eat your meals day after
day and pass me like a stick or a stone!"

The slow blood burned in Adam's face and hammered in his pulses. His blue
eyes were bashful through its heat. "I don't feel like a stick nor a
stone. You know it, Emmy. You want to be careful," he added gently. "Would
going away look as if I cared?"

"Why--why don't you ask me to go with you?" The girl tried to meet his
eyes. She turned off her question with a proud laugh.

"Be--careful, child! You know why I can't take you up on that. Would you
want we should leave him here alone--without even Becky? You're only
trying me for fun."

"No; I am not!" Emmy was pale now. Her breast was rising in strong
excitement. "If we were gone, he would know then what you are worth to
him. Now, you're only Adam! He thinks he can put you down like a boy. He
won't believe I care for you. There's only one way to show him--that is,
if we do care. In one month he would be sending for us back. Then we could
come, and you would take your right place here, and be somebody. You would
not eat in the kitchen, then. Haven't you been like a son to him? And why
shouldn't he own it?"

"But if he won't? Suppose he don't send for us to come back?"

"Then you could strike out for yourself. What was Tom Madden, before he
went away to Colorado, or somewhere--where was it? And now everybody stops
to shake hands with him;--he's as much of a man as anybody. If you could
make a little money. That's the proof he wants. If you were rich, you'd be