"Oh, I can see you have been used to something better than this," said Lucy, bustling to and fro as she spoke, and adding another cup and saucer and plate to the tea things on the small table. "I laughed to myself when Mrs. Brown said you were a real lady—persons like her make such mistakes—but I see that she was right. But a lady does not contemn poverty, does she?" and she laughed as she cut some bread and butter.
"Especially when she is poor herself," thought Leslie, but she only smiled.
"And so I thought I would venture to intrude upon you," continued Lucy Somes. "I was half afraid, for you looked so—so—I want a word! it isn't proud; so aristocratic and reserved I'll say—that I quite trembled; and it was only by saying, 'she is only a girl and no older than yourself and all alone and in trouble,' that I plucked up courage to go up to you."
"Am I so very terrible?" said Leslie, with the smile that all Portmaris—and Yorke—had found so irresistible.
"Not now when you look like that," replied Lucy Somes, "but when you are grave and solemn, as you were when you passed by me yesterday, you are very—very—stand-offish. Will you have some sugar in your tea? I've made some toast. Papa—" she stopped suddenly, then went on in a subdued voice—"papa used to say that I made toast better than any of the others. He is dead," she added after another pause; and Leslie saw the eyes grow dim behind the spectacles.
She put out her hand and laid it on the girl's arm.
"Did he——?"
"Three months ago," said Lucy Somes, sadly, yet cheerily. "He was a country clergyman down in Wealdshire. He caught a fever visiting a parishioner. There are seven of us—and mother. I'm the second."
She poured out the tea while she was speaking, and was obviously fighting with her tears.
"Seven of us! Just fancy! Poor mother didn't know what to do! So I came up to London to fight my way in the world. And I mean to fight it, too! What awful stuff the London butter is, isn't it? I don't believe there is a particle of cow's milk in it; do you? Seven of us! Three boys and four girls. And we're as poor as poor can be. Won't you take some milk, if one can call it milk?"