. Milray had thrown out a hint of something of the kind
at parting, but that was the last of it; and now she at once made up her
mind that she would like to go with Mrs. Lander, while discreetly saying
that she would ask her father and mother to come and talk with her.

XIII.

Her parents objected to leaving their work; each suggested that the other
had better go; but they both came at Clementina's urgence. Her father
laughed and her mother frowned when she told them what Mrs. Lander
wanted, from the same misgiving of her sanity. They partly abandoned this
theory for a conviction of Mrs. Lander's mere folly when she began to
talk, and this slowly yielded to the perception that she had some streaks
of sense. It was sense in the first place to want to have Clementina with
her, and though it might not be sense to suppose that they would be
anxious to let her go, they did not find so much want of it as Mrs.
Lander talked on. It was one of her necessities to talk away her emotions
before arriving at her ideas, which were often found in a tangle, but
were not without a certain propriety. She was now, after her interview
with Clementina, in the immediate presence of these, and it was her ideas
that she began to produce for the girl's father and mother. She said,
frankly, that she had more money than she knew what to do with, and they
must not think she supposed she was doing a favor, for she was really
asking one.

She was alone in the world, without near connections of her own, or
relatives of her husband's, and it would be a mercy if they could let
their daughter come and visit her; she would not call it more than a
visit; that would be the best thing on both sides; she told of her great
fancy for Clementina the first time she saw her, and of her husband's
wish that she would come and visit with them then for the winter. As for
that money she had tried to make the child take, she presumed that they
knew about it, and she wished to say that she did it because she was
afraid Mr. Lander had said so much about the sewing, that they would be
disappointed. She gave way to her tears at the recollection, and
confessed that she wanted the child to have the money anyway. She ended
by asking Mrs. Claxon if she would please to let her have a drink of
water; and she looked about the room, and said that they had got it
finished up a great deal, now, had not they? She made other remarks upon
it, so apt that Mrs. Claxon gave her a s