"When you want to go, John Flint--when you really and truly want to go, why, take anything I have that you may fancy, my son. I give it you beforehand." "I don't want anything given to me beforehand!" he growled. "I want to take what I want to take without anybody's leave!" "Very well, then; take what you want to take, without anybody's leave! I shall be able to do without it, I dare say." He turned upon me furiously: "Oh, yes, I guess you can! You'd do without eating and breathing too, I suppose, if you could manage it! You do without too blamed much right now, trying to beat yourself to being a saint! Of course I'd help myself and leave you to go without--you're enough to make a man ache to shoot some sense into you with a cannon! And for God's sake, _who_ are you pinching and scraping and going without _for_? A bunch of hickey factory-shuckers that haven't got sense enough to talk American, and a lot of mill-hands with beans on 'em like bone buttons! They ain't worth it. While I'm in the humor, take it from me there ain't anybody worth anything anyhow!" "Oh, Mr. Flint! What a shame and a sin!" called another voice. "Oh, Mr. Flint, I'm ashamed of you!" There in the freedom of the Saturday morning sunlight stood Mary Virginia, her red Irish setter Kerry beside her. "I came over," said she, "to see how the baby-moths are getting on this morning, and to know if the last hairy gentleman I brought spins into a cocoon or buries himself in the ground. And then I heard Mr. Flint--and what he said is unkind, and untrue, and not a bit like him. Why, everybody's worth everything you can do for them--only some are worth more." The wild wrath died out of his face. As usual, he softened at sight of her. "Oh, well, miss, I wasn't thinking of the like of you--and him," he jerked his head at me, half apologetically, "nor young Mayne, nor the little Madame. You're different." "Why, no, we aren't, really," said Mary Virginia, puckering her brows adorably. "We only _seem_ to be different--but we are just exactly like everybody else, only _we_ know it, and some people never can seem to find it out--and there's the difference! You see?" That was the befuddled manner in which Mary Virginia very often explained things. If God was good to you, you got a little glimmer of what she meant and was trying to tell you. Mary Virginia often talked as the alchemists used to write--cryptically, abstrusely, as if to hide the golden truth from all but the initiate. "Come and shake hands with Mr. Flint, Kerry," said she to the setter. "I want you to help make him understand things it's high time he should know. Nobody can do that better than a good dog can."