"Your money, Mrs. Brown?" interrupted Rachel, with a start.
"Why, of course, my money. Whose else? Didn't you know of it?"
"Indeed, I did not," replied Rachel, confounded.
"La! what a muff the girl is!" good-humouredly observed Mrs. Brown. "And where did you think, stupid, that the money you have been nursed with these three months came from? Why, from my pocket, of course; twenty pound three-and-six, besides a quarter's rent, and another running on."
Rachel was dismayed at the amount of the debt. When and how should she be able to pay so large a sum? Still, rallying from her first feeling of surprise and dismay, she attempted to express to Mrs. Brown her gratitude for the assistance so generously yielded, and her hope of being able to repay it some day; but Mrs. Brown would not hear her.
"Nonsense, Rachel," she said, "I ain't a-done more than I ought to have done for my cousin's step-daughter. And to whom should Jane, when she wanted money, have come, but to me? And as to paying me, bless you! there's no hurry, Rachel. I can afford, thank Heaven, to lend twenty pound, and not miss it."
This was kindness—such Rachel felt it to be; but, alas! she also felt that these was on her, from that day, the badge of obligation and servitude. She was still too weak to work; she had, dining her long illness, lost the best part of her customers; until her full recovery, she was, perforce, cast on Mrs. Brown for assistance, and, of all persons, Mrs. Brown was the last not to take advantage of such a state of things. Mrs. Brown came when she liked, said what she liked, and did what she liked in Rachel's house. But, indeed, it was not Rachel's house—it was Mrs. Brown's. Rachel was there on sufferance; the very bed on which she slept was Mrs. Brown's; the very chair on which she sat was Mrs. Brown's. So Mrs. Brown felt, and made every one feel, Rachel included.
The effects of her rule were soon apparent. Every article of furniture changed its place; every household nook was carefully examined and improved, and every luckless individual who entertained a lingering kindness for Rachel Gray, was affronted, and effectually banished from the house, from irascible Madame Rose down to peaceful Mr. Jones.
Rachel carried patience to a fault; through her whole life, she had been taught to suffer and endure silently, and now, burdened with the sense of her debt and obligation, she knew not how to resist the domestic tyranny of this new tormentor. The easiest course was to submit. To Rachel it seemed that such, in common gratitude, was her duty; and, accordingly, she submitted. But this was a time of probation and trial: as such she ever looked back to it, in after life. To Jane, her patience seemed amazing, and scarcely commendable.
"I wonder you can bear with the old creetur, that I do," she said, emphatically.