She did not think of reminding Mrs. Colwyn that she had been up since six o'clock that morning helping the charity orphan to scrub and scour, cooking, making beds, sewing, teaching Tiny between whiles, and scarcely getting five minutes' rest until dinner-time. She only began to wonder how she could manage to get all her tasks into the day if she had lessons to give as well. "I suppose I must sit up at night and get up earlier in the morning," she thought to herself. "It is a pity I am such a sleepy person. But use reconciles one to all things."
Mrs. Colwyn meanwhile went on lecturing.
"And above all things, Janetta, remember that you ask high terms and get the money always in advance. You are just like your poor father in the way you have about money; I never saw anyone so unpractical as he was. I'm sure half his bills are unpaid yet, and never will be paid. I hope you won't be like him, I'm sure——"
"I hope I shall be like him in every possible respect," said Janetta, with compressed lips. She rose as she spoke and caught up the basket of socks that she was mending. "I don't know how you can bear to speak of him in that slighting manner," she went on, almost passionately. "He was the best, the kindest of men, and I cannot bear to hear it." And then she hurriedly left the room and went into her father's little surgery—as it had once been called—to relieve her overcharged heart with a burst of weeping. It was not often that Janetta lost patience, but a word against her father was sufficient to upset her self-command nowadays. She rested her head against the well-worn arm-chair where he used to sit, and kissed the back of it, and bedewed it with her tears.
"Poor father! dear father!" she murmured. "Oh, if only you were here, I could bear anything! Or if she had loved you as you deserved, I could bear with her and work for her willingly—cheerfully. But when she speaks against you, father dear, how can I live with her? And yet he told me to take care of her, and I said I would. He called me 'his faithful Janet.' I do not want to be unfaithful, but—oh father, father, it is hard to live without you!"
The gathering shades of the wintry day began to gather round her; but Janetta, her face buried in the depths of the arm-chair, was oblivious of time. It was almost dark before little Tiny came running in with cries of terror to summon her sister to Mrs. Colwyn's help.
"Mamma's ill—I think she's dying. Come, Janet, come," cried the child. And Janetta hurried back to the dining-room.
She found Mrs. Colwyn on the sofa in a state of apparent stupor. For this at first Janetta saw no reason, and was on the point of sending for a doctor, when her eye fell upon a black object which had rolled from the sofa to the ground. Janetta looked at it and stood transfixed.
There was no need to send for a doctor. And Janetta saw at once that she could not be spared from home. The wretched woman had found a solace from her woes, real and imaginary, in the brandy bottle.