“I may as well out with it at once,” said Mr Timmins. “It was never my wish that it should have been kept from you all these years, but I only obeyed your parent’s special instructions. You have left school—”
“Oh yes,” said Florence; “and I am glad. What are we to do in the future, Daddy Timmins?”
She often called him by that name. He took her soft young hand and stroked it. There was a husky note in his voice. He found it difficult to speak. After a minute or two, he said abruptly—
“Now, children, I will just tell you the very worst at once. You haven’t a solid, solitary hundred pounds between you in this wide world. I kept you at school as long as I could. There is not enough money to pay for another term’s schooling, but there is enough to pay Mrs Fortescue for your Christmas holidays, and there will be a few pounds over to put into each of your pockets. The little money your father left you will then be quite exhausted.”
“I don’t understand,” said Brenda, after a long time.
Florence was silent—she, who was generally the noisy one. She was gazing straight before her out into Mrs Fortescue’s little garden which had a light covering of snow over the flower-beds, and which looked so pretty and yet so small and confined. She looked beyond the garden at the line of the horizon, which showed clear against the frosty air. There would be a hard frost to-night. Christmas Day would come in with its old-fashioned splendour. She had imagined all sorts of things about this special time; Christmas Day in hot countries, Christmas Day in large country houses, Christmas Day in her own home, when she had won the man who would love her, not only for her beauty, but her wealth. She was penniless. It seemed very queer. It seemed to contract her world. She could not understand it.
Brenda, who had a stronger nature, began to perceive the position more quickly.
“Please,” she said—and her young voice had no tremble in it—“please tell me exactly what this means and why—why we were neither of us told until now?”
Mr Timmins shrugged his shoulders.
“How old were you, Brenda, when your father and mother died?” he asked.