“Oh, do let her stay,” earnestly pleaded the young man, “she has often sat with me while I smoked before.”
“Well, as you please, but don’t spoil her,” said the mother. She left the room, and Sibyl curled herself up luxuriously in a deep armchair near Mr. Rochester.
“I have a lot of things to ask you,” she said; “I am not going to be like my ownest mother, I am going to be like Lady Helen. I want to understand about the gold mine. I want to understand why, if you give your money to a certain thing, you get back little bits of gold. Can you make the gold into sovereigns, is that what happens?”
“It is extremely difficult for me to explain,” said Rochester, “but I think the matter lies in a nutshell. If your father gives a good report of the mine there will be a great deal of money subscribed, as it is called, by different people.”
“What’s subscribed?”
“Well, given. You know what it means when people ask your mother to subscribe to a charity?”
“Oh, yes, I know quite well; and Mr. and Mrs. Holman, they may subscribe, may they?”
“Yes, whoever they may be. I don’t know Mr. and Mrs. Holman, but of course they may intend to subscribe, and other people will do the same, and if we give, say, a hundred pounds we shall get back perhaps one hundred and fifty, perhaps two hundred.”
“Oh, that’s very nice,” said Sibyl; “I seem to understand, and yet I don’t understand.”
“You understand enough, my dear little girl, quite enough. Don’t puzzle your poor little brain. Your mother is right, these are matters for men.”