“Oh-h-h,” said Miss Jones,—“oh-h dear!”
Some tears gathered on her black lashes, and slipped slowly down her cheeks. They were clear tears too, and the lashes had not changed colour. Meg remembered Nellie’s accusation and blushed.
“W-what is it you want me to do?” the young dressmaker said. “Oh-h, you are cruel.”
Meg felt she was, but kept telling herself she must save Pip. Still, the girl’s tears and large, beautiful eyes touched her tender heart. She put out her hand impulsively and took the one with needle-marked fingers; she held it in hers while she talked to her gently and wisely and firmly. She spoke of Pip’s extreme youth, of his penniless [122] ]condition, his dependence on the Captain. “My father is a hard man, and a poor man. I don’t think he would ever forgive or recognise my brother again as long as he lived,” she said. “Then again, Philip has been used to comfort and certain luxuries all his life—to mixing in good society. He would be miserable, and make you miserable too, to go to such utterly changed conditions. Not one unequal marriage in fifty is happy—it is almost impossible they should be; and think how young he is.”
“I ’adn’t quite made up my mind,” Miss Jones said, feeling she needed some justification. “Yes, I know he’d got the ring—he bought it as soon as I said yes; and at first I thought as it would be nice to be married straight off, but often when he wasn’t here I used to think as I wouldn’t after all.”
“That was very wise of you,” said Meg fervently, “very good of you. Oh, I knew I should only have to represent things to you a little for you to see how unwise it would be.”
Miss Jones looked a little gratified, though still somewhat mournful. She felt very much like one of the heroines in her favourite Bow Bells or Family Novelettes; sacrificing herself in this noble manner for the good of her lover. But secretly, like Pip, she too felt a trifle relieved.
All her life she had been used to poverty. Things [123] ]had been a little more “genteel” with them since she had been earning money of her own; but still there was the never-ending struggle of trying to make sixpence buy a shillingsworth. And, from all accounts, it would only be intensified by marriage with this handsome youth she had been so taken with lately. She thought of a certain faithful ironmonger whose heart had been half broken lately by her coldness to him. He was spoken of already as a “solid” man—a shilling need only do its legitimate work if she yielded to his entreaties and married him. Perhaps, after all, it was unwise for a girl in her position to think of a “gentleman born”; and yet Pip’s way of speaking, his nice linen cuffs and gold links, his well-cut serge suits, had been a great happiness to her.
“Well?” said Meg softly, breaking in at length upon her train of thought.
“Oh, I s’pose I’ll give him up,” she answered, somewhat ungraciously.