'Have you been over the house? You remembered it! You have seen your little girls in our own cribs at last.'
'Yes, I have so often wished to come, ever since you have been here. You quite understand that I should have been so glad, only journeys are so expensive, and we are so many.'
'I see.'
'That is one of the few ways in which I can save,' she said. 'It is such an anxiety to have so many daughters.'
'Seven now?'
'Seven! Adrian says it makes us ridiculous. Poor children! That's what I came to speak to you about, Felix. I want you to talk to Adrian.'
'About what?' asked Felix, not sanguine of either talking the daughters into sons, or their father into preference of the sex.
'About some provision for them,' said the mother; and there ensued an explanation that nothing was secured to the children but her own portion from uncle Tom, while as to the estate, so long as there was no male heir, Sir Adrian could do as he pleased with it, and at the rate of his present expenditure there would be little left for his successors; and Alda, with some vague idea of Felix's helpfulness, had come to beg him to persuade her husband to insure his life, contract his expenses, or do something that might secure her children from dire poverty. She began with a wife's natural reticence and a guarded voice, but gradually, as the home sense of being with the brotherly protector of earlier days wrought upon her, she dropped her caution, and disclosed the harass of her life. Her husband, it seemed, was more and more devoted to the turf, and the display he thought needful to his position, but while he grudged his wife every outlay needful to maintain that ostentation, he was still more unwilling to allow her the requisites for the health, comfort, and education of the children.
'He thinks anything will do for them,' said Alda, with a dismal sharpness in her voice; 'he can't bear spending on anything but himself.'
'No, no, Alda, it is hardly well to put such things into words.'