"Oh! I don't understand those fine sayings!" she declared, a little impetuously. "I only know that to have money is grand, is wonderful. I would give anything in the world to be rich, to have money to spend as I wanted to spend it, and clothes, and jewels, and all the delightful little things of life, to go where I wanted, live as I wished, buy the things I wanted to buy. There's something hideous about being a pauper."
He looked at her curiously. She was certainly, for all her frankness, a new type. Her frankness was more the frankness of a child than the outspokenness of gaucherie.
"Some day," he said, "you may probably have your wish. There is your uncle, for instance."
She nodded. "It is my one hope," she said, "my one hope. I go to meet the postman every morning. It is three weeks since he wrote and said that he was going to send for me. You don't think that he would change his mind?" she asked, turning suddenly towards him with almost tragic intensity.
"Very unlikely, I should say," he answered. "Has he any other relatives?"
"None," she answered. "Even my uncle and aunt with whom I live here are not relatives of his. You see, he was my father's brother. Mr. Sarsby was my mother's brother."
"It is Mr. and Mrs. Sarsby with whom you live?" he remarked.
She nodded. "Yes! And my name is Sinclair," she said,—"Ruby Sinclair."
He stopped short for a minute in the middle of the dyke path. She was walking a little ahead, and missing him in a few moments, turned around. He was standing like a man turned to stone.
"What is the matter?" she asked. "Are you tired, or aren't you well?"