“Your risks, in this case, may safely be reckoned as non-existent. On your own showing, Dick Grantham’s money will bring in about three hundred a year to each of his children until it passes into their own control. To feed and clothe them meanwhile will cost perhaps a hundred a year each, and leave a handsome margin for educational and other expenses. There is no question of risk.”
“My dear man, I’ve been into the business part of it from end to end and understand it perfectly—a great deal better than you do, in all probability. That’s not the point. There are other risks than monetary ones. Good Heavens! if that was all one thought of!”
“Do you mean risks to the children themselves?”
“You know very well that I don’t. Little sheltered happy things, what risks do they run, I should like to know? But the responsibility is a big one for me—two more to love and guard and teach, and turn into honest, healthy, happy young women.”
“The constant society of Miss Blandflower is hardly likely to do that.”
“Poor Minnie! Why do you hate her?”
“I don’t. But she is neither honest nor healthy nor happy, and I therefore fail to see why you should expect her to make her pupils so.”
“She is perfectly honest, Frederick. If she isn’t healthy, it’s because she won’t take enough exercise, and that whining voice doesn’t mean that she isn’t happy. It’s only affectation.”
“If she’s affected she isn’t honest,” remarked Frederick, scoring a point. “However, leave Miss Blandflower out of it. I’m talking of the Grantham children. Why don’t you send them to school?”
“Because,” said Bertha, her eyes blazing, “they are two motherless children, and no woman with a heart worth the name would have them anywhere but under her own wing. My heart is big enough to take in three children, thank God—yes, and as many more as may need me.”