She went on with her gardening, just as happy as before, but the face that the little author took to his work-table had grown grave in a minute.
"She was born to have servants," he said, "servants and ease. I must work harder."
Cyril's voice broke into his reverie. He had come beneath the study windows to interview his mother.
"Can't I be raised to twopence a week now I'm going on for thirteen," he said. "Bert Davis gets threepence, and he's only nine."
Mr. Brace did not catch the reply. But he told himself that most men would have been more liberal in the matter of £. s. d. to their only son.
He began to pace round and round his study.
"I must work harder—harder—harder!" he said. "I must put my book away, and grind out those articles for Montgomery!"
Nancy, in a big white sun-bonnet, clean for the new week, passed under his window and turned her face to the wicket gate. He could hear that she was crying in a miserable forsaken way, crying and talking to herself away within that capacious bonnet of hers.
He called "Baby!" and leaned over his window sill to her. But she did not hear him. She just went murmuring on to the gate.
Then two other hurrying little figures came along. Cyril, with a battered hat crushed down on his head, and his school-bag over his shoulders, and Betty with her boots unlaced, a white bonnet under her arm, and a newspaper parcel, which she was trying to coax into neatness, in one hand.