“Seventeen years, ma’am.”
“And I’m eighty—one of us at the beginning, the other at the end of life! Heigh-ho! And so you’re governess here?”
Lally replied in the affirmative.
“No wonder you look sorrowful and pale and woe-begone!” muttered Mrs. Wroat. “To be governess of the young Blights is a horrible martyrdom. Don’t you think so? And isn’t it martyrdom to be under the orders of that odious, vulgar, garrulous Mrs. Blight? Hey?”
“When I came here,” said Lally agitatedly, “I had no home on earth. I was out of money, out of clothes, and utterly friendless. And so, madam, I am very grateful to Mrs. Blight for shelter and a home, and I cannot consider any service that gives me these a martyrdom.”
“Grateful, eh? What have you to be grateful for?” asked the old lady cynically. “You have shelter and food, but you earn them, I’ll be bound. You work early and late for the pitiful sum of forty pounds a year. That is what you get, is it not?”
“No, ma’am. I am young and inexperienced, and I needed the place so much, so I get but twenty pounds a year.”
“Bless my soul!” cried the old lady. “Because you needed the place so much, you get only half price! That is just like Laura Blight. How came you to be so friendless?”
“After my father’s death,” said Lally, “I taught music in the school in which I had been educated. The school broke up, the proprietors being advanced in life and being able to retire from labor, and I was thrown adrift. I was obliged to do anything I could get to do. I lived for some weeks or months with an old woman who was seamstress to a boys’ school, and when she died I was out of work again, and came down into Kent and worked in the hop-fields. I was so hungry—”
“Do you hear that, Peters?” interrupted the old lady, turning savagely upon her attendant, her bright black eyes beaded with tears. “Do you hear it, and sit there unmoved? She was hungry, while my servants flung away the dainties from my table, and I grumbled because they could not contrive newer delicacies to tempt my appetite. Hungry? Homeless? Friendless? Heaven be merciful to me! Hungry! Ah-h!”