“No; not now. I have my Greek Testament, my Plato, and my Shakspere —and one or two little books besides, whose wisdom I have not yet quite exhausted.”
“I can’t bear it!” cried Clementina, almost on the point of weeping. “You will not let me near you. You put out an arm as long as the summer’s and push me away from you. Let me be your servant.”
As she spoke, she rose, and walking softly up to him where he sat kneeled at his knees, held out suppliantly a little bag of white silk, tied with crimson.
“Take it—father,” she said, hesitating, and bringing the word out with an effort; “take your daughter’s offering—a poor thing to show her love, but something to ease her heart.”
He took it, and weighed it up and down in his hand with an amused smile, but his eyes full of tears. It was heavy. He opened it. A chair was within his reach, he emptied it on the seat of it, and laughed with merry delight as its contents came tumbling out.
“I never saw so much gold in my life, if it were all taken together,” he said. “What beautiful stuff it is! But I don’t want it, my dear. It would but trouble me.” And as he spoke, he began to put it in the bag again. “You will want it for your journey,” he said.
“I have plenty in my reticule,” she answered. “That is a mere nothing to what I could have to-morrow morning for writing a cheque. I am afraid I am very rich. It is such a shame! But I can’t well help it. You must teach me how to become poor.—Tell me true: how much money have you?”
She said this with such an earnest look of simple love that the schoolmaster made haste to rise, that he might conceal his growing emotion.
“Rise, my dear lady,” he said, as he rose himself, “and I will show you.”
He gave her his hand, and she obeyed, but troubled and disappointed, and so stood looking after him, while he went to a drawer. Thence, searching in a corner of it, he brought a half sovereign, a few shillings, and some coppers, and held them out to her on his hand, with the smile of one who has proved his point.