"In about three weeks. It'll be Hamlet without the prince for some of us, eh, coz?"
She did not answer.
"You must only look upon it as put off for awhile," he said reassuringly. "You'll get another chance."
She shook her head. "I don't feel I shall. Don't you ever feel there's just one time for the one thing?"
"Even if I didn't, Shakespeare has. But you're over-young, Flash, to be thinking of fortune at the ebb."
He looked down at her hand. There were no rings on it. He had a suspicion that was confirmed when she snatched it off the table and put it in her lap.
"Don't think me impertinent, but will it make much difference, I mean financial difference, to you if your mother dies?"
"I don't know. I'm afraid so. But I have a little money coming to me when I'm twenty-one. Not a lot."
"How old are you now?"
"Nearly nineteen."