Nell glanced at the clock.
"So it is! There'll be a row. It's all your fault, Dick. Why don't you go for a sail, or shrimping, or something? A boy's always a nuisance in the house. I'll come at once, Molly. There!" she exclaimed, as a woman's thin voice was heard calling in a languid and injured tone:
"Molly!"
"'Twas the voice of the sluggard——'" Dick began to quote; but Nell, with a hissed "Hush! she'll hear you!" ran out, struggling with her laughter. Five minutes later, she went up the stairs with a salver on which were a dainty chocolate service and a plate of thin bread and butter, and entering the best bedroom of the cottage, carried the salver to a faded-looking woman who, in a short dressing jacket of dingy pink, sat up in the bed.
She was Mrs. Lorton, the stepmother of the boy and girl. She had been pretty once, and had not forgotten the fact—it is on the cards that she thought herself pretty still, though the weak face was thin and hollow, the once bright eyes dim and querulous, the lips drawn into a dissatisfied curve.
"Here is your chocolate, mamma," said the girl. She hated the word "mamma"; but from the first moment of her introduction to Mrs. Lorton, she had declined to call her by the sacred name of "mother." "I'm afraid I'm late."
"It is ten minutes past the time," said Mrs. Lorton; "but I do not complain. I never complain, Eleanor. A Wolfer should at least know how to suffer in silence. I hope it is hot—really hot; yesterday it was cold—quite cold, and it caused me that acute indigestion which, I trust, Eleanor, it will never be your lot to experience."
"I'm sorry, mamma; but yesterday morning you were asleep when I brought it in, and I did not like to wake you."
"Not asleep, Eleanor," said Mrs. Lorton, with an air of long-suffering patience—"no, alas! not asleep. My eyes were closed, I have no doubt; but I was merely thinking. I heard you come in——Surely that is not all the cream! I have few fancies, Heaven knows; but I have always been accustomed to half cream and half chocolate, and an invalid suffers acutely from these deprivations, slight and trifling though they may appear to one in your robust, I had almost said savage state of health."
"Isn't there as much as usual? I will go and see if there is some more," said the girl, deftly arranging the tray. "See, it is quite hot this morning."