Agatha made a sudden movement.
"I wonder how you can do it," said she.
"Do what?" asked Mrs. Greatorex, letting the pretty little pale pink silk sock she was knitting lie upon her lap for a moment.
"Accept his services gratuitously?"
Mrs. Greatorex laughed.
"What have you got into your head now?" asked she. "He has attended me for the past year. Last month I sent him a cheque with a little hint to the effect that as I felt so much better I need not trouble him again. He came the next day. I then told him plainly I could afford no more fees out of my slender income. He said—very gracefully, as I thought—that he could never bear to resign a case until a perfect cure had been accomplished—or something to that effect. Well, why should I not allow him to be happy in his own way?"
"And I am a burden to you," said the girl in a low voice.
"My good child, never give yourself over to nonsense!" said Mrs. Greatorex, with a shrug. "You know very well I am delighted to have you."
She took up her little sock again and turned the heel.
The needles clicked on, and Agatha thought. Was her aunt delighted to have her? Sometimes things pointed that way. But certainly she was a burden to her, as Mrs. Greatorex's income was not only a small one, but she herself was a of a decidedly miserly disposition. The girl had certainly a miserable twenty pounds a year of her own, but that was too little. She made it suffice for her dress, but it sufficed very badly. It was all, however, her father, Colonel Nesbitt, had been able to leave her. Sometimes the girl felt that she loved her, worldly as she was. When she was sixteen, the colonel died. At sixteen she had found herself an orphan, without a friend, and almost penniless, and but that Mrs. Greatorex had then come forward, the poor child would hardly have known what to do or where to go. Fortune favours the brave, they say; sometimes, however, it favours the beautiful.