“Will you get out, Jennie?” inquired her father.
“No papa dear, I would much rather not,” she answered.
“Then take the baby while I go,” he said, carefully placing the little one on her lap within her arms.
“Now, what shall I bring you, dear?” he next inquired.
“A cup of tea and a biscuit, papa, nothing more,” replied Jennie, who remembered the slender purse of the curate, who could ill afford the journey to Liverpool and back with his daughter.
She had ten pounds left of her own, but did not dare to offer them to her father, whose very poverty made him sensitive. She meant, however, when she should reach the parsonage, to put that little fund, through her mother’s agency, into the general household expenses.
Mr. Campbell left the carriage and went across to the refreshment rooms.
Jennie’s fellow passengers of the second class did not leave their seats, but took out luncheon baskets, and soon the air was full of the sound of popping ginger beer or ale or porter bottles, while bread and cheese and beef were laid out on laps covered with brown wrapping paper for a tablecloth.
The woman with the babies and the woman with the bundles, who sat opposite to Jennie and seemed to be friends, drew the cork of brown stout—one holding the bottle, and the other pulling the screw with all her might.
Then the mother filled a little thick glass tumbler with the foaming porter and held it to Jennie, saying kindly: