"Thirty pounds, ten shillings and sixpence," she muttered, as she essayed to rise from her knees; "oh, my poor joints! I'm that stiff I declare I can hardly get up!"
Melina did not wait to assist her. Acting on the impulse of the moment, she retreated quickly before her grandmother could turn round and see her, and stole downstairs as cautiously as she had come up. Then she opened and shut the front door noisily, and went into the kitchen.
"I knew she wasn't as poor as she made out, but I didn't know she was rich like that," thought the little girl; for the money she had seen seemed to her quite a fortune. "No wonder she is afraid of thieves! And oh, how wicked—how cruel of her—to pretend to be poor and not to give me warm clothes and proper food! Thirty pounds, ten shillings and sixpence! I must mind not to let her guess that I know where it is! Oh, I do wonder where she got it all!"
Melina was in total ignorance of her grandmother's present means of support. Some years before Mrs. Berryman had been an old clothes dealer and had kept a tiny shop in a squalid back street of the town, but she had given up that business when she had come to live in Jubilee Terrace. People called to see her "on business" now frequently, very poor people they seemed to be, and it was always a puzzle to Melina what they wanted; but she had never been able to find out, for her grandmother interviewed her visitors alone in the front downstairs room of the cottage, and if she ventured to question her about them she was invariably snubbed.
"Mel—lina! Mel—lina!"
Mrs. Berryman had heard the front door open and shut, as Melina had intended she should, and was now calling to her granddaughter.
"Yes, Gran," Melina answered; and again went upstairs to her grandmother's room.
"You're back from school earlier than usual," remarked Mrs. Berryman, who by this time was in bed; "how's that?"
"Because I ran nearly all the way home," the little girl replied.
"What made you run?"