"OH, I WRENCHED MY SHOULDER A BIT," HE SAID.
"It is because we are all so busy," was my reply, "and moreover have little superfluous cash. We can afford neither the time nor the money for such pleasant little trips."
Then I felt the blood mount to my forehead, and was thankful that in the twilight, he could not see how I blushed for my outspokenness. Why do people find it harder to avow poverty than to confess to grave faults? Few, except those who are really comfortably off, can talk with ease of being poor. I was not to blame, nor were they, that my parents' income was so limited, yet I felt ashamed of the fact that the small sum required for the railway fare to and from London was of importance to us.
"I understand," said Alan Faulkner quietly. "Indeed, I have had to practise that kind of self-denial a good deal myself, and know well how irksome is the effort to keep one's expenditure within narrow limits, yet it is good for one to learn how easily one may do without many of the things that seem desirable."
With that he began to tell me about his early life. His father had died when he was a little boy. When he was twelve years old, his mother married again. Up to that time they had been everything to each other, and he could by no means welcome this change in their life. But his stepfather was good to him, and he became very fond of the little sisters who were born later. Before they were grown-up, their father died, and Alan found himself the sole guardian of his mother and his sisters. Very simply, he told the story, saying little of the part he had played. Not till long afterwards did I know that the self-denial of which he had spoken had been voluntarily practised in order that he might secure for his sisters a first-class education.
"So," I said, "the sister who has lately left school and gone to Paris to perfect her French is your half-sister merely."
"But a very real and dear sister all the same," he said.
"And your other sister, where is she?"
"She is a governess in a school in Yorkshire," he replied. "I hope that you and my sisters may know each other some day, Miss Nan."
"Oh, I should like so much to know them!" I said earnestly, while I wondered how it could come about. There was another thing I wanted to know, but I did not like to question him. Perhaps he divined my thoughts, for after a few moments' silence he said in a low tone: