“There are you, Charley, working your way, in secret from father, at the school; and you get prizes; and you go on better and better; and you come to be a—what was it you called it when you told me about that?”
“Ha, ha! Fortune-telling not know the name!” cried the boy, seeming to be rather relieved by this default on the part of the hollow down by the flare. “Pupil-teacher.”
“You come to be a pupil-teacher, and you still go on better and better, and you rise to be a master full of learning and respect. But the secret has come to father’s knowledge long before, and it has divided you from father, and from me.”
“No it hasn’t!”
“Yes it has, Charley. I see, as plain as plain can be, that your way is not ours, and that even if father could be got to forgive your taking it (which he never could be), that way of yours would be darkened by our way. But I see too, Charley—”
“Still as plain as plain can be, Liz?” asked the boy playfully.
“Ah! Still. That it is a great work to have cut you away from father’s life, and to have made a new and good beginning. So there am I, Charley, left alone with father, keeping him as straight as I can, watching for more influence than I have, and hoping that through some fortunate chance, or when he is ill, or when—I don’t know what—I may turn him to wish to do better things.”
“You said you couldn’t read a book, Lizzie. Your library of books is the hollow down by the flare, I think.”