"I don't know. If we can't find any one to teach them, I suppose I must try myself. There is the village school a mile off."
"No, Alice, I shall not let them sink to that."
Aunt Alice laughed and shrugged her shoulders
"Oh, Mother dear, we won't bring them up with empty brains as well as empty purses! They will have to earn their own living, so they must have a good education."
"Well, we will talk about that later."
"And we'll all have a slice of bread and butter now," said Aunt Alice briskly. Then she turned to the children, and began to tell them of all that she had seen and heard since she had left them two days ago.
And when tea was over, Charity slipped out to the kitchen. She was longing to impress Mrs. Cox with the wonderful new life in front of them.
Mrs. Cox was a thin, gaunt woman who came every day from eight o'clock to six in the afternoon. She cleaned, she cooked, she washed and ironed, and was the children's devoted friend. They were never tired of listening to her stories, but Mrs. Cox always enjoyed very dismal subjects. Funerals and illnesses were her chief topics; and her friends seemed to the children to have had the most marvellous diseases, and the most miraculous cures that they had ever heard.
"Oh, Mrs. Cox," cried Charity, dancing up to her, as she sat at the kitchen table enjoying her cup of tea, "we're going to the country to a house all our own, and no lodgers in the top floors of it, a house with a well, and primroses, and apple trees, and we shall have butter—real butter—every day, and a forest with big trees, and we shall pick up wood in it and light our fires. And Aunt Alice will be home all day!"
Mrs. Cox stared at her.