“Paddy, my child, it’s terribly hard for you all,” he said in a gentle voice, “but I’m so hoping you will help me to do the best for your mother and sister.”
He had touched the right chord; no other method could have gone so straight to Paddy’s heart. She gulped down the hard, dry sobs that threatened to choke her, and looking up with an effort said:
“I promised daddy I would be a good son.”
“And I’m sure you will!” her uncle exclaimed. “You will prove yourself a true Adair—your father’s own flesh and blood. You see,” he continued more seriously, “what I am most troubled about is your future and Eileen’s. While your mother lives there is the pension, such as it is, but when she dies, you two little girls will have practically nothing—except an old uncle who will always do what he can.”
Paddy looked up gratefully, but he gave her no opportunity to speak, continuing immediately:
“If I were a rich man, you should none of you want for anything, but I am far from it. We Adairs have a fatal gift of getting through money—a truly Irish trait—and a great part of my private means have gone in medical research, and my practice is in a poor parish, where I have to get what fees I can and leave the rest. As you know, your aunt has a little money, but she has insisted upon giving Basil a most expensive education, and now he is only half through his exams. He may not pass his final for two or three years, and meanwhile he is a great expense.”
He paused and there was a long silence, then Paddy looked up, and, steadying her voice with an effort, said:
“I must earn money, uncle. I must do something at once.”
The doctor knit his forehead together. He knew only too well how, in spite of the widening opportunities for women of earning a livelihood, it is desperately hard for a young girl, fresh from the country, who has done nothing but play most of her life, to gain any kind of a footing in the ranks of women workers.
“It is difficult to begin,” he said, “and you have had no training.”