`` Very true . But you see , these so-called scholarships are private affairs , dependent solely on the whim and choice of Andrew Cameron himself . Of course , when a girl has friends who use their influence with him , he will often send her on their recommendation . They say he sent a girl last year who had n't much of a voice at all just because her father had been an old business crony of his . But Sylvia does n't know anyone at all who would , to use a slang term , have any ` pull ' with Andrew Cameron , and she is not acquainted with him herself . Well , I must be going ; we 'll see you at the Manse on Saturday , I hope , Miss Lloyd . The Circle meets there , you know . '' `` Yes , I know , '' said the Old Lady absently . When the minister 's wife had gone , she dropped her sweetgrass basket and sat for a long , long time with her hands lying idly in her lap , and her big black eyes staring unseeingly at the wall before her . Old Lady Lloyd , so pitifully poor that she had to eat six crackers the less a week to pay her fee to the Sewing Circle , knew that it was in her power -- HERS -- to send Leslie Gray 's daughter to Europe for her musical education ! If she chose to use her `` pull '' with Andrew Cameron -- if she went to him and asked him to send Sylvia Gray abroad the next year -- she had no doubt whatever that it would be done . It all lay with her -- if -- if -- IF she could so far crush and conquer her pride as to stoop to ask a favour of the man who had wronged her and hers so bitterly . Years ago , her father , acting under the advice and urgency of Andrew Cameron , had invested all his little fortune in an enterprise that had turned out a failure . Abraham Lloyd lost every dollar he possessed , and his family were reduced to utter poverty . Andrew Cameron might have been forgiven for a mistake ; but there was a strong suspicion , amounting to almost certainty , that he had been guilty of something far worse than a mistake in regard to his uncle 's investment . Nothing could be legally proved ; but it was certain that Andrew Cameron , already noted for his `` sharp practices , '' emerged with improved finances from an entanglement that had ruined many better men ; and old Doctor Lloyd had died brokenhearted , believing that his nephew had deliberately victimized him . Andrew Cameron had not quite done this ; he had meant well enough by his uncle at first , and what he had finally done he tried to justify to himself by the doctrine that a man must look out for Number One . Margaret Lloyd made no such excuses for him ; she held him responsible , not only for her lost fortune , but for her father 's death , and never forgave him for it . When Abraham Lloyd had died , Andrew Cameron , perhaps pricked by his conscience , had come to her , sleekly and smoothly , to offer her financial aid . He would see , he told her , that she never suffered want .
Margaret Lloyd flung his offer back in his face after a fashion that left nothing to be desired in the way XXXXX plain speaking .
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