want to go with that man, for I
don't know him, and I hate him, but I don't want to go back to that
school. I hate it worse than anything in the whole world. You haven't no
idea what a horrid place it is. They just work you to death, and don't
give you half enough to eat. My constitution won't stand it. I've told
Pop that, and he thinks so too, but Marm, she don't believe in it, and
my stayin' there is all her doin'. I've been wantin' to get away for
ever so long, but I didn't want to be took off in a bag; but now that
I'm out of that horrid hole I don't want to go back, and if you'll take
me home to Pop, I know he won't let me go back, and he'll pay you real
handsome besides.'--'Who's your Pop?' says I.--'He's Mr. Groppeltacker,
of Groppeltacker & Mintz, corset findings, seven hundred and something
or other, I forget the number now, Broadway. Oh, Pop does a lot of
business, I tell you, and he's got lots of money. He sends corset
findings to South America, and Paris, and Chicago, and Madagascar, and
the uttermost parts of the earth. I've heard him say that often, and you
needn't be afraid of his not bein' able to pay you. A lot more than that
man would have paid you for his little gal, if you'd catched the right
one. So if you take me to Pop, and get me there safe and sound, it will
be an awful good speck for you.'

"Now, I begins to think to myself that perhaps there was somethin' in
what that little Jew gal was sayin', and that I might make something out
of the gal after all. I didn't count on gettin' a big pile out of old
Groppeltacker,--it wasn't likely he was that kind of a man,--but
whatever I did get would be clean profit, and I might as well try it on.
He couldn't make no charge ag'in me fur bringin' him his daughter, if
she asked me to do it; so says I to her, 'Now, if I take you home to
your Pop, will you promise on your word an' honour, that you won't say
nothin' about my carryin' you off in a bag, and say that you seed me
walkin' along the road and liked my looks, and told me you were
sufferin', and asked me to take you home to your kind parents, where you
might be took proper care of; and that I said I wasn't goin' that way,
but I'd do it out of pure Christian charity, and nothin' more nor less,
and here you was? And then, of course, you can tell him he ought to do
the handsome thing by me.'--'I'll do that,' says she, 'and I tell how
you talked to me awful kind for more than an hour, tryin' to keep me to
s