Part 8 (2/2)
”He will punish you in some way--won't he?”
”Yes. I don't know what he will do.”
”Well, Kate, we must bring him to terms,” added f.a.n.n.y, with the most impudent a.s.surance. ”If you will mind what I say, he will not punish you at all. Will you do it?”
”I don't know.”
”You don't know! Do you want to go back and be whipped like a baby, be shut up for a week, or something of that kind?”
”Of course I don't.”
”And I will tell you how to get rid of all these things, and make your father as glad to see you as though you had been a good little girl all your life, and had been away on a long journey.”
”How?”
”That's telling!”
”You said you would tell me.”
”And so I will, if you are strong enough to bear it.”
”Well, I am.”
”Don't go home for a week or ten days. Your folks won't know where you are. When they find out you went with me in a boat, they will think you are drowned; and when you go back, they will be so glad to see you that they won't say a word.”
It would have been impossible for a girl who had been brought up by a loving mother to conceive of such a cold-blooded and diabolical proposition. f.a.n.n.y had no mother, no father. Even the remembrance of the former had pa.s.sed from her mind; and her father, while he was living, had been away from her so much that she hardly knew him as a parent. Her antecedents, therefore, did not qualify her to comprehend the loathsome enormity of the course she proposed to her companion.
”I can't stay away from home a week, let alone ten days,” replied Kate, who, bad as she was, was shocked at the proposition.
”Yes, you can.”
”Where shall I stay?”
”Stay with me.”
”Where will you stay?”
”We will go down to New York city.”
”To New York city!”
”That's where I intend to go,” replied f.a.n.n.y, coolly.
”You don't mean so, Fan?”
”Yes, I do; and I have meant it all the time.”
”But you said we were going to Pennville.”
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