“It is so awfully dowdy; it is not what a lady ought to wear. Ladies ought to dress in silks and satins and brocades and rich embroidered robes. Mothery always said so, and mothery surely knew. But there, I am idling you, and I suppose you are busy directing the management of your estates, which are to be——Oh, there! I am pulled up again. I want my money for Jasper, for one thing. Jasper has got some poor relations, and she and I between us support them.”
“She and you between you,” said the Squire, “support your maid’s relations!”
“Oh dear me, Uncle Ned, how stiffly you speak! But surely it does not matter; I can do what I like with my own.”
“Listen to me, Evelyn,” said her uncle. “You are only a very young girl; your mind may in some ways be older than your body, but you are nothing more than a child.”
“I am not such a child as I look. I was sixteen a month ago. I am sixteen, and that is not very young.”
“We must agree to differ,” said her uncle. “You are young and you are not wise; and although there is some money which is absolutely your own coming from the ranch in Tasmania, yet I have the charge of it until you come of age.”
“When I come of age I suppose I shall be very, very rich?”
“Not at all. You will be my care, and I will allow you what is proper, but as long as I live you will only have the small sum which will come to you yearly from the rent of the ranch. As the ranch may possibly be sold some day, we may be able to realize a nice little capital for you; but you are too young to know much of these things at present. The matter in hand, therefore, is all-sufficient. I will allow you as pocket-money five pounds a quarter. I give precisely the same sum to Audrey. Your aunt will buy your clothes, and you will live here and be treated in all respects as my daughter. Now, that is my side of the bargain.”
Evelyn’s face turned white.
“Five pounds a quarter!” she said. “Why, that is downright penury!”