"How glad your mother will be to get the letters!" exclaimed Katherine, wondering how the poor woman had borne the weary waiting of the past weeks.
"It has been hard on her, poor little Mother!" he said softly, then went on with a hardness in his tone that grated on the ears of the listener: "Few women have had to know greater contrasts in life than my mother. She was brought up in the purple, a maid to brush her hair and tie her shoestrings, but for the last six years she has lived in a four-roomed cottage, and has done the family washing."
"Oh, how hard for her!" exclaimed Katherine.
"It was hard, poor Mother!" Jervis said, and his voice grew so tender that the listener understood the previous hardness must have been meant for someone else. He was silent for some time after that, and, pulling slowly up the river, kept his eyes fixed on the water which was gliding past.
Katherine sat with her gaze fixed on the treetops, whilst her fancies were busy with the poor lady who had fallen from the luxury of having a lady's maid to doing the work of a washerwoman.
"I was to have been a doctor," Jervis said abruptly, taking up the talk just where he had dropped it. "We were very poor, so I had worked my way on scholarships and that sort of thing. I was very keen on study, for I meant to make a name for myself. I believe I should have done too, but——"
He broke off suddenly, and, after a pause, Katherine ventured gently: "Don't you think it is the 'buts' which really make us live to some purpose?"
"At least they make a mighty difference in our outlook," he admitted with a smile. "The particular 'but' which stopped my medical studies, and drove me into the first situation where I could earn money was the death of my father, and the consequent cessation of the income which had been his allowance under his grandfather's will. We had been poor before; after that we were destitute."
Katherine nodded sympathetically. Her life had been hard, and there was plenty of rough work in it, but she had never been within seeing distance of destitution, and she had plenty of pity for those whose lives had been fuller of care than her own.
"I tried keeping near home first," went on Jervis; "but it was of no use. There was no room for me anywhere; the only thing I could get to do was a miserable clerkship at twelve shillings a week. Just think of it! Twelve shillings a week, and there were four of us to live! I bore it for six months, and then I cleared out. My next brother, who is four years younger, got work which brought in enough to buy his food, and I have managed to send home something to help to keep my mother and the youngest boy, who is still at school."