"You are in the flower of it."
"And you have known me for years. Gerald, you certainly must have Irish blood in you, to pay such extravagant compliments. Don't think too well of me, my dear boy. I have my faults. Why not? Look at the upbringing that I have had," she ended bitterly.
"Why, your mother is----"
"All that a mother can and should be," interrupted the little woman. "I know that, Gerald. But her husband, my father, was a brute. My husband, whom he made me marry in my teens, was a brute. Both my mother and I have suffered poverty and nearly open shame."
"Poverty!" Gerald glanced round the luxurious room, crowded with such splendid things.
Mrs. Crosbie shrugged again. "These are only necessities," she said contemptuously; "fancy a woman of my tastes having to live in a flat, and being bothered by tradespeople! I want a town house, a country house, a yacht, a chance of traveling all over Europe like other rich people. In fact, I want thousands a year, and I have not got them."
Gerald looked down meditatively. So Tod was right after all, and Mrs. Crosbie was hard up, even to the extent of being dunned by tradespeople. He wondered if he could help her. "You have known me long enough to accept a check," he stammered.
She whiffed away the offer contemptuously. "Although I thank you very much for offering the money," she said graciously, "you always were a dear boy. But the amount of money I want would ruin you, since I am aware that you have but the five hundred a year left by your dear mother. There! there!" she tapped him with her closed fan, "we won't talk further of these disagreeable things. All will be well."
"When you marry Major Rebb?" asked Haskins pointedly.
"Why not? The Major is not bad-looking, and has a good position, and at least five thousand a year."