“I am quite well—perfectly well!” snapped out Mrs. Bunting, and she turned her pale, drawn face, and looked angrily at her stepdaughter.
“’Tain’t often I has a chance of being with you and father.” There were tears in Daisy’s voice, and Bunting glanced deprecatingly at his wife.
An invitation had come to Daisy—an invitation from her own dead mother’s sister, who was housekeeper in a big house in Belgrave Square. “The family” had gone away for the Christmas holidays, and Aunt Margaret—Daisy was her godchild—had begged that her niece might come and spend two or three days with her.
But the girl had already had more than one taste of what life was like in the great gloomy basement of 100 Belgrave Square. Aunt Margaret was one of those old-fashioned servants for whom the modern employer is always sighing. While “the family” were away it was her joy—she regarded it as a privilege—to wash sixty-seven pieces of very valuable china contained in two cabinets in the drawing-room; she also slept in every bed by turns, to keep them all well aired. These were the two duties with which she intended her young niece to assist her, and Daisy’s soul sickened at the prospect.
But the matter had to be settled at once. The letter had come an hour ago, containing a stamped telegraph form, and Aunt Margaret was not one to be trifled with.
Since breakfast the three had talked of nothing else, and from the very first Mrs. Bunting had said that Daisy ought to go—that there was no doubt about it, that it did not admit of discussion. But discuss it they all did, and for once Bunting stood up to his wife. But that, as was natural, only made his Ellen harder and more set on her own view.
“What the child says is true,” he observed. “It isn’t as if you was quite well. You’ve been took bad twice in the last few days—you can’t deny of it, Ellen. Why shouldn’t I just take a bus and go over and see Margaret? I’d tell her just how it is. She’d understand, bless you!”
“I won’t have you doing nothing of the sort!” cried Mrs. Bunting, speaking almost as passionately as her stepdaughter had done. “Haven’t I a right to be ill, haven’t I a right to be took bad, aye, and to feel all right again—same as other people?”
Daisy turned round and clasped her hands. “Oh, Ellen!” she cried; “do say that you can’t spare me! I don’t want to go across to that horrid old dungeon of a place.”
“Do as you like,” said Mrs. Bunting sullenly. “I’m fair tired of you both! There’ll come a day, Daisy, when you’ll know, like me, that money is the main thing that matters in this world; and when your Aunt Margaret’s left her savings to somebody else just because you wouldn’t spend a few days with her this Christmas, then you’ll know what it’s like to go without—you’ll know what a fool you were, and that nothing can’t alter it any more!”