Edith, thereupon, kissed her mother, fondly patted her cheek, and then, when her maid came, tripped lightly to her dressing room.
"Sarah, I never before felt like doing things for myself as I do now," said Edith to her maid, as she sat down to have her shoes removed.
"And would you?" meekly asked the maid, looking up at her mistress.
"Indeed, I would," returned Edith. "I would commence to learn at once were it not for giving offense to my parents."
"And leave me without my lady to wait on and love?" asked the maid, apprehensive of her position. "I could not bear it, dear lady. Why, Miss Edith, I have been with you since you were a teeny baby, and I love you so that I imagine sometimes you are my own dear child."
"Never mind, Sarah; don't be alarmed," returned Edith. "I will keep you if I do learn to wait on myself. But I was thinking, Sarah, that you cannot always tell what might happen. Every one of we mortals is a possible subject for the poorhouse; and if it should come to anything like that I should want to know how to bear my own burdens."
"Don't tell me, Edith," cried Sarah, now alarmed, "that it has come to that!"
"Oh, no, indeed, Sarah," replied Edith, consolingly. "At least not that I know of anything of the kind as being likely to happen. But that was not it, Sarah—not it—why, what am I saying?—it is something else."
Sarah looked up quickly at Edith. Edith was half serious, half mirthful in the little laugh that followed her words. And she toyed with Sarah's graying hairs.
"Edith, are you keeping any secrets from me?" asked the suspicious Sarah.