"Read this, and tell me what you think of it," and my father handed the letter to the old servant.
Teresa seated herself at the end of the table between Louis and me, and with her head in her hand commenced to read--Teresa was not very well-educated and she read the letter very slowly and half-aloud. "Who wrote this?" was her first question.
"The Pastor of the village," replied my father.
"A minister!" exclaimed Teresa. "He's a mighty poor writer for a minister, and no doubt his mother paid mighty well for his 'education.'"
"Yes, yes; I understand half of it, and I think I can guess at the other half."
"Do you want me to help you?" offered Louis.
"You! I should say not! You don't care to help me in the kitchen or run errands for me, and the only thing the matter with you now is curiosity!"
That settled Louis, and Teresa went on with her reading. Bending her great fat form more and more closely over the letter, she became more serious as she neared the bottom of the fourth page where the writing became so close and so fine that it was hardly possible to decipher it. When, at last, she lifted her head, her eyes were full of tears. "Poor, poor little thing!" she repeated softly.
"Well, what do you think?" said my father.
"What do I think? Why we must send at once and have her come here as soon as possible, because--"
"Who?" my father interrupted her without ceremony.
"Tell us, father, please," added my sister Rosa, a tall, serious girl of fifteen.
And as he did not answer us quickly our questions multiplied.
"Patience! Patience!" cried my father; "your turn will come."
"Teresa, you are getting old, and another girl in the house simply means more work for you and a lot more problems for me. If 'she' (my father had never been able to reconcile himself to pronounce the name of my mother since her untimely death)--if 'she' were here I would not hesitate, but to bring another orphan into a family already half-orphaned doesn't seem right to me."
"Don't worry, sir, a little more work doesn't worry Teresa Rouland. She will have to get up a little earlier and go to bed a little later, and that will be all."
"Well, Teresa, I'll think about it, and it needs to be 'thought about' a good deal."