Camelia finished her sentence, smiling, however, as she put her hand on her mother’s without looking up. Her mind, indeed, was soothed, comparatively comfortable.
“No rude questions, Mamma!”
“You understand all these solemn books?” Over her daughter’s shoulder, where she leaned, Lady Paton looked respectfully at the heavy volume.
“I am beginning to understand that whatever one does in philanthropy is wrong from the point of view of some authority!” Camelia said, stretching herself on a long yawn, and then gently pinching her mother’s chin, while the smile dwelt upon her appreciatively, “As usual I find that the only thing to do in this world is to do just as one likes.”
“If one can,” said Lady Paton, with a half sad playfulness.
“If one can;” the words woke in Camelia a painfully personal affirmative, and with the wave of self-pity that swept through her mingled a sense of her mother’s unconscious pathos. Still holding her chin she looked up at her, “It has often been can’t with you, hasn’t it?”
Lady Paton’s glance fluttered to a shy alarm and surprise at this application.
“With me, dear?”
“Yes—you have had to give up lots of things, haven’t you? to put up with any amount of disagreeable inevitables.”
“I have had many blessings.”