'But, oh, Mr. Gillespie!' she cried, clasping her hands in her earnestness, 'that's just what he must never, never, never think of!'
'But he tells me it's the only thing—the family has—to live upon,' Gillespie interposed, hesitating.
'Then the family can starve!' Maud cried, with a sudden flash of those tearful eyes. 'We're Plantagenets, and we can bear it. But for Dick to leave Oxford, and spoil all our best hopes for him—oh, Mr. Gillespie, can't you feel it would be too, too dreadful? We could never stand it!'
Gillespie surveyed her from head to foot in admiration of her spirit. Such absolute devotion to the family honour struck a kindred chord in his half-Celtic nature.
'You speak like a Plantagenet,' he, answered very gravely—for he, too, had caught some faint infection of the great Plantagenet myth. 'You deserve to have him stop. You're worthy of such a brother. But don't you think yourself it would be right of him—as he does—to think first of your mother and his sisters and brothers?'
Maud rose and faced him.
'Mr. Gillespie,' she cried, clasping her hands, and looking beautiful as she did so, 'I don't know why I can speak to you so frankly: I suppose it's because you're Dick's friend, and because in this terrible loss which has come upon us so suddenly we stand so much in need of human sympathy. But, oh—it's wrong to say it, of course, yet say it I must; I don't care one penny whether it's right or whether it's wrong; let us starve or not, I dodo want Dick to stop on at Oxford!'
Gillespie regarded her respectfully. Such courage appealed to him.
'Well, I dare say I'm as wrong as you,' he answered frankly; 'but, to tell you the truth—so do I; and I honour you for saying it.'
'Thank you,' Maud cried, letting the tears roll now unchecked, for sympathy overcame her. She fell back again into, her chair. 'Do you know,'-she said unaffectedly, 'we don't care one bit what we do at Chiddingwick; we don't care, not one of us! We'd work our fingers to the bone, even Nellie, who's the youngest, to keep Dick at Oxford. We don't mind if we starve, for we're only the younger ones. But Richard's head of our house now, heir of our name and race; and we were all so proud when he got this Scholarship. We thought he'd be brought up as the chief of the Plantagenets ought to be.' She paused a moment and reflected; then she spoke again. 'To leave Oxford would be bad enough,' she went on, 'and would cost us all sore; it would be a terrible blow to us, though, I suppose, that's inevitable; but to come back to Chiddingwick, and take up my dear father's profession—oh, don't think me undutiful to his memory, Mr. Gillespie, for our father was a man—if you'd known him long ago, before he grew careless—a man we had much to be proud of—but still, well, there! if Dick was to do it, it would break our very hearts for us.'