Miss Perkins replied with due caution. The price differed at different seasons. It was more in August than in June. It was more for a short let than for a longer let. She at length named two or three prices.
"And if the room were taken for the whole year round?"
Miss Perkins looked dubiously at Millie.
"I have not much of my own, but there will be a little—rather more than I have expected. I heard that this morning. Enough to pay for all my expenses lately, and—"
A murmur of disclaimer came. The better side of Miss Perkins rose uppermost. "She had not expected repayment."
"I am sure you have not; but that is a matter of course. I could not let you suffer for all you have done for me. This will not make any difference to my feeling of gratitude. I might have been penniless; you did not know that I was not; and it has made no difference to your action. But I am thankful to say that you will at least not be the poorer for what you have done."
"I couldn't take all you've got. I couldn't, and I wouldn't, and that's flat." Miss Perkins spoke in the tone of a deeply injured individual. If she had been uneasy before at the pull to which her generosity might be subjected, she was disappointed now to find that it would be no question of generosity at all, except as to the matter of intention.
"O no, you will not take all. I shall have a tiny income of my own—not much, but enough to pay for a room, and even to keep me going for a time with care. I must try to find work of some kind, so as to add to it, and perhaps to lay by a little. It may or may not be possible here, and I don't know what I may do by-and-by; but for the present I would rather stay quietly where I am. Will you let me do so? I shall feel that I am among friends, and I am not strong enough yet to fight my way in a new place. I am quite willing for the next few weeks to pay just what you would have had from other lodgers. If, a little later, I should decide to make it my home, we could come, perhaps, to some arrangement. You must not be a loser, of course; but I think it might repay you better to have a permanent lodger, even on rather lower terms, than to let only for two or three months in the year."
Miss Perkins had so often said exactly the same herself, that she could not contradict Mildred, dearly as she loved to contradict everybody. She hardly knew whether to feel pleased or not.
"An old friend of my father's, living in London, has asked me to go to him and his wife; but I do not think I could stand London, or life in a large noisy household. My home has always been in the country, and to go back to my old home would be too sad. Will you let me stay, at all events for a time?"