But here, luckily for the girl, her sense of fun carried her away, and she laughed until she cried. Her tears, however, were not all of merriment.
“Why, certainly, mother,” said she merrily. “I should be very indignant with any person who said they were not! Look here,” she went on with sudden gravity, “what’s the use of pretending any longer that we can live on in the old way, when you know we can’t? What’s the use of keeping up this house, and having servants, whom we don’t see how we shall be able to pay, when we dread every knock of the postman, because it may be more bills? Mother—mother, do let us give it up. Don’t let us play any longer at being anything but dreadfully poor. Let us face it, and make the best of it.”
“What!” exclaimed the poor lady, whose pitiful pride, to do her justice, was much more concerned with her beautiful young daughter’s position than with her own; “and be a housekeeper! Just an upper servant; and, perhaps, have this horrid man asking you to mend the tablecloths and count the clothes for the wash!”
“Well, mother, I shouldn’t mind,” said Chris laughing; “and it’s too bad to call him a horrid man, when the worst thing the poor fellow has been guilty of, so far, is to advertise for a housekeeper for his ‘large establishment.’ Oh! mother, wouldn’t you like to be at the head of a large establishment again, even if it were somebody else’s!”
But Mrs. Abercarne shook her head. Her daughter’s persuasions—perhaps the very novelty of her child’s trying to persuade seriously at all—were taking their effect upon her; but it was an effect which produced in the poor gentlewoman the most acute shame and misery.
“What would Lord Llanfyllin say?” murmured she.
“What could he say except that it was a good deal better to keep somebody else’s house, than to starve in one’s own?” retorted Chris, brightly. “And as he’s never seen me, or taken the slightest notice of you since poor papa died, we really needn’t trouble ourselves about him at all.”
This was self-evident, but Mrs. Abercarne did not like to be reminded of the fact. Her cousin, by a remote cousinship, Lord Llanfyllin, had forgotten her very existence years ago; but in the most sacred recesses of her heart he still sat enthroned, symbol of all that was greatest and noblest in the land and of her connection with it. She liked to think that her actions mattered to him; and to be reminded of the fact that they did not, was eminently distasteful to her.
The postman, soon after this, came to the aid of Chris and her arguments by bringing the usual batch of worrying letters with bills and threats. With a burst of tears Mrs. Abercarne gave way, and with her daughter’s soothing arms around her neck answered the loathsome advertisement with an eager hope in her heart that her letter would remain unnoticed by the advertiser.
Poor lady! she was disappointed. Two days later she received an answer to her letter, written in the neat hand of a man of business, in the following words: