I stared at the two coppers and the little bit of silver in dismayed silence.
“Take off your hat, Gwen,” continued Emma, impetuously, “and listen to me. I’m not fit to be trusted with money—never was; I can’t keep it. ‘Sufficient unto the day,’ has always been my motto. You, I can see, are prudent; you are good at figures, old beyond your years. I suppose you take after your mother’s people, for your father was nearly as—as—extravagant and heedless as myself. Now I’m going to lay my affairs before you—place everything in your hands, and let you manage all our money.”
“Eightpence!” I repeated half under my breath.
“You know, we never saved a penny. I had a few hundreds of pounds from our auction, and I’ve spent that. A short life, and—a—a merry one!” looking at me with her pretty sapphire-colored eyes drowned in tears. “We have had a good time, have we not? And I was certain that the dear old Jam-Jam, who was so fond of your father—and, indeed, with every reason—would give us a handsome pension. But I have had a horrible letter by the mail just in. The Jam-Jam, who has been ailing for months—the new doctor did not understand his constitution—is dead. I am truly sorry.” A fresh burst of tears.
“Was all this grief for the Jam?” I asked myself, and stood confounded.
“My dear, we are paupers,” she sobbed. “Mr. Watkins, the agent, says that the new rajah, the nephew, a detestable creature, who I know never could endure me, will only give a hundred and thirty pounds a year, and that has been wrung from him with the greatest difficulty. And then, as if this letter was not enough, here is one from the bank, to say my account is overdrawn, and I thought I had three hundred pounds there still! I never, I knew, kept a proper account. Just drew checks, and never or seldom filled up the tiresome counterfoils, and now there is their hideous bank-book, all so neatly made up: ‘Self, ten pounds; Self, forty pounds; Self, twenty pounds.’ I can’t think what has become of it! I’m not used to keeping money, you see. I never bothered about putting down my expenses. Mrs. Keene brought me up these horrid letters, and came in too to ask about dinner, and I told her it was really shameful to charge two and sixpence for a cauliflower, and that we really could not afford to pay her prices, and she was quite insolent. When I have paid her, we shall have just—this—this—eightpence——”
And she dashed it over nearer to me, and, leaning her head on her arms, went off in hysterics.