'Yes,' he said, 'I remember your cousin, Richard Rae, very well; he was one of my pupils. He disappointed me, and he disappointed your uncle; he ought to have taken a first class. He went into the Church, and we gave him a college living, I remember—a very small living—and he married, I believe, directly after.'
'He married, and he had a large family and a sickly wife, and very small means. It must have been a hard struggle for him, poor Dick! He lost his wife, and his children died one after the other; there is only one left. And now he is dead, and the girl is left quite alone.'
'Oh, it is a girl,' said the Tutor in a tone of disappointment; 'if it had been a boy we could have done something with him here.'
'Yes,' said Mary, with a sigh; 'pity it's a girl; it would have been so much easier if it had been a boy. She must come here, of course; there is nowhere else for her to go.'
'What will you do with her when she comes?'
The Senior Tutor looked grave; the question had come into his head as he stood speaking to Mary, what should he do with this girl of Cousin Dick's when he occupied the Master's place? Of course Mary would stay, and Mrs. Rae—he could not separate the old woman from her niece during her few declining years; she would certainly remain an inmate of the lodge; but this girl? he could not make the college lodge an asylum for all the female members of the Rae family.
It was an idiotic question to arise; he was ashamed of it the next moment.
'I think you ought to go to Thorpe Regis,' he said, 'and be with your poor young cousin at this trying time. I will look after the Master while you are away, if that will make the going easier.'
'Ye—es,' said Mary slowly, 'it will make it easier. You really think I ought to go?'