“Yes, I did,” said Charles Osmond, sadly.
“It always has been the same,” said Erica. “Father has a delightful story about an old gentleman who at one of his lectures accused him of being rich and self-indulgent—it was a great many years ago, when I was a baby, and father was nearly killing himself with overwork—and he just got up and gave the people the whole history of his day, and it turned out that he had had nothing to eat. Mustn't the old gentleman have felt delightfully done? I always wonder how he looked when he heard about it, and whether after that he believed that atheists are not necessarily everything that's bad.”
“I hope such days as those are over for Mr. Raeburn,” said Charles Osmond, touched both by the anecdote and by the loving admiration of the speaker.
“I don't know,” said Erica, sadly. “It has been getting steadily worse for the last few years; we have had to give up thing after thing. Before long I shouldn't wonder if these rooms in what father calls 'Persecution alley' grew too expensive for us. But, after all, it is this sort of thing which makes our own people love him so much, don't you think?”
“I have no doubt it is,” said Charles Osmond, thoughtfully.
And then for a minute or two there was silence. Erica, having finished her toasting, stirred the fire into a blaze, and Charles Osmond sat watching the fair, childish face which looked lovelier than ever in the soft glow of the fire light. What would her future be, he wondered. She seemed too delicate and sensitive for the stormy atmosphere in which she lived. Would the hard life embitter her, or would she sink under it? But there was a certain curve of resoluteness about her well-formed chin which was sufficient answer to the second question, while he could not but think that the best safeguard against the danger of bitterness lay in her very evident love and loyalty to her father.
Erica in the meantime sat stroking her cat Friskarina, and wondering a little who her visitor could be. She liked him very much, and could not help responding to the bright kindly eyes which seemed to plead for confidence; though he was such an entire stranger she found herself quite naturally opening out her heart to him.
“I am to take notes at my father's meeting tonight,” she said, breaking the silence, “and perhaps write the account of it afterward, too, and there's such a delightfully funny man coming to speak on the other side.”
“Mr. Randolph, is it not?”
“Yes, a sort of male Mrs. Malaprop. Oh, such fun!” and at the remembrance of some past encounter, Erica's eyes positively danced with laughter. But the next minute she was very grave.