"We're leaving the shop," Mrs. Day told her. "You must try to keep where you are, for the time, Deleah. Miss Forcus is kind to you?"
"Oh, so heavenly kind!"
"And Sir Francis?"
"I suppose he knows I am in the house. Yes. Sometimes he speaks to me quite ten words a day. Tell me about leaving the shop, mama."
"Mr. Boult has proved to me that we are not solvent."
"What does that mean? Not that we are bankrupt? Oh, mama! As if we had not had disgrace enough without that!"
"There is no end to it," Mrs. Day said hopelessly. "But you, at least, are out of it, Deleah." She had a dreary air of detachment about her; the troubles that had beset them had been common to them all, but Mrs. Day sat, on this holiday afternoon, as if she were singled out and set apart, a queen of sorrows. Deleah resented that attitude.
"Surely you don't think I want to be out of it, mama! Do you think I want to live in luxury while you and Bessie haven't a home?"
And at that moment Bessie appeared, coming in from the kitchen and confidential confabulation with Emily. Her face was flushed, and her eyes glittered with an excitement too evidently not pleasurable.
"Well! What do you think of it?" she burst forth.