“How old is the baby?” his wife asked.
“Three; but she can’t walk yet. She has never been strong.”
There was something very old and womanly about Amy’s way of saying this that showed plainly how she was her mother’s companion and help, and had lost her childishness in the anxiety of needing money, an anxiety that makes children old before they are grown up.
“And how many more of you are there?” Mrs. Kayll inquired, as her husband seemed to be still thinking.
“There’s Kitty,” she said. “That’s all; mother and Kitty, baby and me. Kitty’s only four.”
“What have you been living on since you lost your father, my dear?” Mr. Kayll asked, suddenly looking up, for he had been staring very hard at the boards of the floor where they were visible through a hole in the carpet.
The little girl coloured faintly.
“Mother used to take sewing, but she has been so ill and so busy nursing baby that she hasn’t been able to do any. We haven’t had any money lately except what I’ve earned, but we can do with very little,” she concluded pathetically. And then guessing at the question that was coming, she added: “I’m a model.”
“A what?”
“I sit for painters to draw and paint me,” she said, “when they want me, but that isn’t always, and the last week or two I haven’t been wanted at all. And mother thought perhaps you’d help us a little until—until—I get something to do again, or mother is better and can take in sewing.”