"No." The word came slowly, and Lettice's eyes widened into a thoughtful gaze, her needle lying neglected. She had a somewhat childish look for her fifteen years; and her small-featured pale face scarcely told of the firm nerves or indomitable pluck of her brother and half-sister. Yet it was a happy face, contented and cheery: and the girl, if of more sensitive make than they, was capable of resolute effort, and of patient endurance, though as yet she had not been greatly called upon for the exercise of either.
Cecilia Anderson was a woman of remarkable force and courage. She had been practically a mother to Felix and Lettice, since the death of their own mother, when Lettice was only six months old: and from the death of their father—hers and theirs also—whereby they were at once reduced from ease to penury, she had borne up with unfailing determination.
Not only by her exertions had she made a home for the two children, and given them thus far a good education: but she had also paid all her father's debts—not large, perhaps, in actual amount, but very large in proportion to Cecilia's means. She knew no rest till they were liquidated: and she would have done twice as much in love to her father's memory. He had not been a gifted man, or an estimable man, or a man of high principle: but he had had the power to make all women believe in him.
Cecilia was cultivated in no common degree; thoroughly well taught, and well read: a good French and German scholar: a good musician: a passable artist: and with these powers she possessed also an unlimited capacity for work. No doubt her handsome face, her refined and dignified manner, helped her to make way. Until recently, her time had been for years more than full: and the incessant toil had been sufficiently repaid.
But of late, a change had come. She had begun slowly to drop out of the ranks of the always employed, and to find large gaps in her time, once entirely occupied. Competition in a place like Brighton is very keen: and perhaps she was wearing out physically under the long strain, not able to teach so well. She had often sat up for hours at night, correcting exercises, when her days were over-full. And even in her holidays, she had known no rest with incessant holiday-engagements. Nature will in time take its revenge.
One pupil after another dropped away; and fresh pupils no longer sprang to supply the vacant places. The worry of this told upon her severely. She could stand work, but she could not stand the absence of work. It was scarcely a year since the last of her father's debts had been paid; and she had hoped for a time of less pressure, when she might lay by a little for the future. Now, this new reverse was come!
Treading upon the heels of lessening work came soon the direful question how to get on? How to pay rent and bills, how to procure food and clothing, how to meet educational expenses?
Lettice went daily to a school near: one of the earlier modern High schools. Felix, who showed signs of considerable ability, had only left school this last Michaelmas. Cecilia idolised Felix. She loved Lettice, quietly: but her whole heart was bound up in the boy, this young half-brother, to whom she had been sister and mother and friend, all in one, and for whose success in life she would gladly have flung away her own happiness. Once upon a time she had indulged in a wild dream of College; but this dream had faded under the stringent necessity of finding work for him, without delay.
At first she sought the "something" with ideas far too lofty of what might be expected; since, surely, there were few boys in Brighton like her Felix. Employers did not view the matter with her sisterly eyes, however; and step by step she had to descend in her notions as hope after hope faded.
Had Felix and Lettice been a little more experienced, they might have read in Cecilia tokens of the impending break-down, during the autumn term: but they did not. To the last she never complained, never gave in, never failed in a single lesson. When the collapse came, it was sudden and entire. In the morning she went out as usual: before night she was dangerously ill.