Deborah shook her head.
“She won’t let me comfort her. She has never—never looked upon me as anything but an intruder, and when our poor father dies I shall have to go. It is only right, too, of course. It’s only lately I’ve begun to see and know what a burden I must have been upon them all these years——”
“Nonsense, Deb. You may be sure my father—and all of us—never considered you that.”
“Of course he didn’t, he is too good,” said the girl, with a caressing tone. “But it’s true, all the same. And you needn’t look like that at me. I shall be glad to earn my own living, and I don’t care how. See, I’ve begun to make my own dresses; I made this one.”
With the tears still rolling down her cheeks, she sat upright with some pride.
“The back of the bodice looks a little like the waves of the sea in a pantomime,” said Godwin, who was a critic on the subject of woman’s dress. “However, no doubt the intention was better than the sewing.” Then he came to a sudden stop, and presently said, “There’s something else to be thought of when you talk about going away. You know we all want to marry you.”
“Rees doesn’t,” burst from her lips.
The next moment she hung her head, crimson and confused.
But Godwin took this outburst beautifully.
“He couldn’t just now, however much he wanted to,” said he, soothingly. “But he will by-and-bye, if he isn’t even a more thundering idiot than I think him,” he added with a burst of irritation. “And if he shouldn’t——”