‘Well, then, what? Speak out like a man!’ Still reluctant, but it was brought out at last: ‘Cousin Hugh told us about the poor sick Irish children that have no potatoes. May I give it to him to send them?’
‘Never mind the Irish children. This is for yourself.’
‘Myself?’ Johnnie looked up, bewildered, but with a sudden thought, ‘Oh! I know, Aunt Theodora, won’t it buy that pretty work-basket to give mamma on her birthday? She said she could not afford it. And Helen wanted the great donkey in the shop-window. Oh! I can get Helen the great donkey; thank you, Aunt Nesbit!’
The next day Aunt Nesbit received Johnnie by giving him five sovereigns to take to Cousin Hugh for the Irish, desiring him to say it was his own gift; and while Johnnie scrupulously explained that he should say that she gave it to him to give, she began to instruct him that he would be a rich man by and by, and must make a handsome and yet careful use of his money. ‘Shall I?’ said Johnnie, looking up, puzzled, at his younger aunt.
‘Yes, that you will,’ replied Mrs. Nesbit. ‘What shall you do then?’
‘Oh! then I shall buy mamma and my sisters everything they want, and mamma shall go out in the carriage every day.
‘She can do that now,’ said Theodora, who had expected less commonplace visions from her nephew.
‘No,’ said Johnnie, ‘we have not got the carriage now. I mean, we have no horses that will draw it.’
It was another of those revelations that made Theodora uneasy; one of those indications that Arthur allowed his wife to pinch herself, while he pursued a course of self-indulgence. She never went out in the evening, it appeared, and he was hardly ever at home; her dress, though graceful and suitable, had lost that air of research and choiceness that it had when everything was his gift, or worn to please his eye; and as day after day passed on without bringing him, Theodora perceived that the delay was no such extraordinary event as to alarm her; she was evidently grieved, but it was nothing new. It was too plain that Arthur gave her little of his company, and his children none of his attention, and that her calmness was the serenity of patience, not of happiness.
This was all by chance betrayed; she spoke not of herself, and the nightly talks between the two sisters were chiefly of the children. Not till more than a week had passed to renew their intimacy, did Theodora advert to any subject connected with the events of her memorable stay in London, and then she began by asking, ‘What did I overhear you telling papa about Lord St. Erme?’