José — page 151: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

144 JOSE. eyes, “your former position in the house must neces- sarily cease. While I was here as your guardian there was nothing to be said against it; but a young girl alone in a house with a young man——” “You need not finish. father,” Mary interrupted, slowly raising her head; “if I cannot accompany you, as you have intimated, and my return to the > States is barred by circumstances which you have given me to.understand render it impossible, there is nothing to prevent me from becoming useful in some capacity under Hattie, until such time as I shall be able to find an opportunity to make a change——” “Will you allow me to say a word, Miss Mary?” McGregor asked. The girl encountered a look full of appealing tenderness. “Hverything that you may devise to accomplish your purpose is absolutely impracticable. Now, since I detect how seriously averse you are to my suit, believe me I felt pained beyond expression to see you in this plight, with nowhere a shadow of hope of. your wishes being gratified. To assign you to any position save to such where you will command obedience and re- spect is utterly impossible on my account, unless I chose to relinquish all hopes of still possessing you. In that event you would become a domestic, and would shortly have twenty wooers where now you have but one; against whose importunities I should find it utterly impossible to protect you. As to Hattie’s views, and to what extent you would by such a course obtain her friendship, you may judge from the simple fact that yesterday the old lady, using her prerogative of former nurse and early instructor, cited to me the impropriety I was guilty of toward the servants in so long tolerating a young Eomichooks;com