Muriel listened to all these confidences and to many more before she allowed Frances to leave her. She knew that the girl was in real need of a woman’s sympathy and encouragement, and she hoped by judicious counsel to make the entry on a new and strange life a little easier for her favourite. Miss Carlyon was quite as fond of planning and contriving as were any of her young folk; she meant to do her full share in helping forward Frances’s ambitions, and to see that none of her girls had more of her personal help and affection than the lass who was so ready and eager to conquer fate.
The lights in Rowdon Cottage burned throughout that last night of Jim Morland’s solitary life. The hours of dusk and darkness and dawning were few and short to the busy lad, who worked steadily and with intention during every moment they gave him. Jim’s eyes were already fairly-well opened to the nature of the burden he had taken on his young shoulders. He had accepted in a spirit Mrs. Morland had not dreamed of, her injunction that he should consider himself the head of the little family.
He knew that he must be, first of all, the bread-winner. Jim’s calculations as to ways and means were already completed, and he had reckoned up the average of his earnings, added the result to the sum which came to him from the provision made by his grandfather, and decided that he might count on a weekly income of thirty-five shillings.
Jim was not ignorant enough to suppose that this amount could allow for any save the simplest methods of housekeeping, even when supplemented by garden produce and home-reared poultry. The old woman who did his cooking and housework expected only a small wage, but this, and her food, made a serious item of expenditure; and poor Jim wondered anxiously whether her blundering ways would be tolerated by his fastidious stepmother. Jim was not prone to hard judgments, but he was not a fool; and he had seen that Mrs. Morland could be both unjust and unreasonable. He knew, only too surely, how Frances had shrunk from contact with himself; and argued that she would be predisposed to despise his cottage home.
The lad grew hot and cold by turns as he anticipated his inability to satisfy their expectations; and at last came to the wise decision that he would, at the outset, make confession of his modest means, and avoid the worse pain of raising hopes he could not fulfil.
“For I must not run into debt,” pondered Jim. “I promised grandfather I never would do that.”
Even without the remembered promise to admonish him, Jim was not cast in the mould of those people who can look their just creditors unblushingly in the face.
When morning brought his elderly housekeeper, the lad nerved himself for an ordeal. This was no less a matter than an important parley with old Elizabeth Macbean. Elizabeth was a Scotswoman, and an excellent domestic according to her lights; but her gaunt, angular person and strong-featured countenance were not prepossessing, and Jim was nervously anxious lest she should give offence by her independent speech and manners. To old East and his grandson her civility had never fallen short; she had looked on them as her superiors simply because they employed her, and she had even shown a kind of motherly interest in her younger master. But Jim recollected that Elizabeth had heard with compressed lips and scowling brow the facts he had found it necessary to tell her about the changed affairs of Rowdon Cottage; so he was not without qualms as he prepared to add to his news at this latest possible moment. His gentle nature made him shrink from inflicting pain, and he feared he was about to hurt well-meaning old Elizabeth. Fortunately, Jim had no mixed notions on the score of duty; and it seemed to him now that his duty was plain.
He left Elizabeth to go about her morning work as usual, and was careful to do justice to the simple breakfast prepared for him. Home-baked scones and new-laid eggs were excellent fare in Jim’s opinion; and he rose from the table refreshed and strengthened in spite of his long night of toil.