The older visitor glanced at me up in my corner. It was "Les Miserables" that day, I remember, and their talk played on the surface of my mind while my heart was busy with Cosette.
"Does she go to school?" she asked.
"No," my mother faltered.
The ladies looked at each other.
"What! At her age! Why, who teaches her?" they demanded, in a shocked chorus.
"I do myself—sometimes," my mother answered, still falteringly.
"Take my advice," the visitor with the black eyes said, decisively, "and send that child to school. Why it's a shame! It isn't fair to the child."
"When she grows up she will regret it," the one with the tight mouth added.
"She isn't strong," my mother explained. "We have kept her at home on that account; but I suppose, yes, I suppose, that she ought to go to school."
She looked at me a moment in a worried fashion, and then brightened, a trifle of her old pride returning.