“Let me see that neatly arranged paper,” said Frithiof. “I have become rather a connoisseur in the matter of cheap living, and you had better take me into your counsels.”
“You don’t know anything about it,” said Sigrid, laughing. “Yours was not cheap living but cheap starving, which in the end is a costly affair.”
Frithiof did not argue the point, having in truth often known what hunger meant in the old days; but he possessed himself of the paper and studied it carefully. It contained for him much more than the bare details, it was full of a great hope, of an eager expectation, the smallness of each item represented a stepping-stone in the highway of honor, a daily and hourly clearing of his father’s name. He looked long at the carefully considered list.
| £ | s. | d. | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Food, | 1 | 2 | 0 |
| Rent, | 0 | 7 | 6 |
| Fuel and light, | 0 | 2 | 0 |
| Laundress, | 0 | 5 | 0 |
| Charwoman, | 0 | 3 | 0 |
| Clothing, | 0 | 14 | 0 |
| Extras, | 0 | 1 | 6 |
| Total, | £2 | 15 | 0 |
“With a clever manager it will be quite possible,” he said, “and you are no novice, Sigrid, but have been keeping house for the last eleven years.”
“After a fashion,” she replied, “but old Gro really managed things. However, I know that I shall really enjoy trying my hand at anything so novel, and you will have to come and see me very often, Cecil, to prevent my turning into a regular housekeeping drudge.”
Cecil laughed and promised, and the two girls talked merrily together as they stitched away at the household linen, Frithiof looking up from his newspaper every now and then to listen. Things had so far brightened with him that he was ready to take up his life again with patience, but he had his days of depression even now, though, for Sigrid’s sake, he tried not to give way more than could be helped. There was no denying, however, that Blanche had clouded his life, and though he never mentioned her name, and as far as possible crowded the very thought of her out of his mind, resolutely turning to work, or books, or the lives of others, yet her influence was still strong with him, and was one of the worst foes he had to fight against. It was constantly mocking him with the vanity of human hopes, with the foolishness of his perfect trust which had been so grossly betrayed; it was an eternal temptation to think less highly of women, to take refuge in cynical contempt, and to sink into a hard, joyless skepticism.
On the other hand, Sigrid, as his sister, and Cecil, as a perfectly frank and outspoken friend, were no small help to him in the battle. They could not altogether enter into his thoughts or wholly understand the loneliness and bitterness of his life, any more than he could enter into their difficulties, for, even when surrounded by those we love, it is almost always true that
“Our hermit spirits dwell and range apart.”
But they made life a very different thing to him and gave him courage to go on, for they were a continual protest against that lowered side of womanhood that Blanche had revealed to him. One woman having done her best to ruin the health alike of his body and his soul, it remained for these two to counteract her bad influence, and to do for him all that can be done by sisterly love and pure unselfish friendship.