“Do you approve of her plan of living by herself? It seems a strange one for such a young girl.”
“Indeed Annie doesn’t trouble herself about my approval. I can’t say I think it a proper thing for a girl to do who has been brought up like Annie; but she is so obstinate—just like her mother, my poor sister.”
“It is a great pity that she does not consult you more,” said George deferentially. “Having no mother, she ought certainly to defer to you as her representative.”
“That is just what I say!” cried Mrs. Mansfield, growing confidential. “I have begged her to come and live here; the house is certainly smaller than she is used to, but still it’s a home, and she would be more comfortable, or she ought to be”—this with some asperity—“among her own relations.”
“Certainly,” said George, with conviction. He had just caught the sound of children quarreling and screaming up-stairs, and his thoughts hardly went with his words.
“She might go backward and forward to town for her music-lessons from here quite easily; and why should she not get daily pupils about here as well as in town, if she has made up her mind to that? Then she would have the comforts of a home to come to in the evening, and she might amuse herself in her spare time by helping me to teach my own children.”
“It would be a delightful arrangement,” said George, with fervor; then, growing bold—“And, as she is a nice, lady-like girl, I have no doubt she would soon find a husband among her own friends.”
Mrs. Mansfield shook her head, with her lips drawn tightly together.
“I am sorry to say, Mr. Braithwaite, that Annie considers herself too good for my friends. I don’t wish to say anything against one of my own blood; but I must say I don’t think such high-and-mighty airs becoming. It is not as if she was living now as she did when her father was alive, and when nothing was too good for her.”
“Her father was well off, I believe?”