The meaning was not far to seek; Jane understood everything—yes, even her father’s hypocrisies. She listened for a few minutes to her friend’s indignant exclamations, then looked up, her resolve taken.
‘Mrs. Byass, I shall take no more money. I shall go to work again and earn my living. How thankful I am that I can!’
‘Why, what nonsense are you talking, child! Just because that—that creature—Why, I’ve no patience with you, Jane! As if she durst touch you! Touch you? I’d like to see her indeed.’
‘It isn’t that, Mrs. Byass. I can’t take money from father. I haven’t felt easy in my mind ever since he told me about it, and now I can’t take the money. Whether it’s true or not, all she said, I should never have a night’s rest if I consented to live in this way.’
‘Oh, you don’t really mean it, Jane?’
Bessie all but sobbed with vexation.
‘I mean it, and I shall never alter my mind. I shall send back the money, and write to the man that he needn’t send any more. However often it comes, I shall always return it. I couldn’t, I couldn’t live on that money! Never ask me to, Mrs. Byass.’
Practical Bessie had already begun to ask herself what arrangement Jane proposed to make about lodgings. She was no Mrs. Peckover, but neither did circumstances allow her to disregard the question of rent. It cut her to the heart to think of refusing an income of two pounds per week.
Jane too saw all the requirements of the case.
‘Mrs. Byass, will you let me have one room—my old room upstairs? I have been very happy there, and I should like to stay if I can. You know what I can earn; can you afford to let me live there? I’d do my utmost to help you in the house; I’ll be as good as a servant, if you can’t keep Sarah. I should so like to stay with you!’