She had been home three days, and on this particular morning she was helping her mother in sorting and repairing house-linen, really a great treat after the continuous grind of term.
“Times are bad, and he does not feel that he can afford the luxury of an assistant,” said Mrs. Sedgewick with a sigh. “Dr. Bowles is very good at helping him out: he has taken night work for your father several times, which is very good of him. I think that professional men are really very good to each other.”
“Dr. Bowles ought to be good to father; think how father worked for him when he had rheumatic fever—so it is only paying back.” Dorothy spoke with spirit, then asked, with considerable anxiety in her tone, “Is it the expense of my year at the Compton School that is making it so hard for father just now?”
Mrs. Sedgewick hesitated. Of choice she would have kept all knowledge of struggle from the children, so that they might be care free while they were young. But Dorothy had a way of getting at the bottom of things—and perhaps, after all, it was as well that she should appreciate the sacrifice that was being made for her. “We had to go rather carefully this year on your account, of course. Tom is an expense, too, for although he has a scholarship there are a lot of odds and ends to pay for him that take money. But we shall win through all right. And if only you are able to get the Lamb Bursary you will be set up for life—you may even be able to help with the twins when their turn for going away comes.”
“Mother, if I did not go in for the Lamb Bursary, I could take a post as junior mistress when I leave school; then I should be getting a salary directly.” Dorothy spoke eagerly; she was suddenly seeing a way out, in her position with regard to the Mutton Bone—a most satisfactory way out, so she said to herself, as she thought of the horrible story of her father’s past that had been told to her by Mrs. Wilson.
A look of alarm came into the face of Mrs. Sedgewick, and she broke into eager protest. “Don’t think of such a thing, Dorothy. A mistress without a degree can never rise above very third-rate work. Your father and I are straining every nerve to fit you to take a good place in the world; it is up to you to second our efforts. You have got to win the Lamb Bursary somehow. If you can do that your father’s burden will be lifted, and he will have so much less care. Oh! you must win it. We sent you to the Compton School because of that chance, and you must not disappoint us.”
Dorothy shivered. Next moment a hot resentment surged into her heart. She was doing her best to win it, and it was not her fault that in real truth she was not eligible for it.
She had told her mother of her meeting with Mrs. Wilson. What she did find impossible to tell Mrs. Sedgewick was about the stories Mrs. Wilson had told her of her father’s past; there was a certain aloofness about Mrs. Sedgewick—she always seemed to keep her children at arm’s length.
Greatly daring, Dorothy did try to find out what she could about those old days, and she ventured to ask, “Mother, what has become of that cousin of father’s, Arthur Sedgewick? Mrs. Wilson spoke of him to me.”
“Then try and forget that you ever heard of him.” Mrs. Sedgewick spoke harshly; she seemed all at once to freeze up, and Dorothy knew that she would not dare to speak of him to her mother again.