"It is bad news. But everything that happens to us is bad," said Deleah, with uncharacteristic despondency.
"Bad?" echoed Bessie. "That depends on how you look at it."
"Bankruptcy? To owe more than we can pay? I should have thought that there was only one way of looking at it."
Bessie swung round to her mother. "You haven't told Deda!" she cried accusingly. "She hasn't told you! Mama is going to marry Mr. Boult, Deleah."
"To marry him!" Deleah cried, as if she might have cried "to murder him!" and sprang from her chair to stand before her mother. "Mama! Mama!"
Mrs. Day, sitting huddled in her chair as if she lacked the spirit to hold herself upright, and looking all at once a dozen years older, shook a desponding head. "I can't!" she said. "I don't think I can do it."
"Well, you've got the chance," Bessie said, hardly. "And it's a good one. Good for all of us. He's rich. He has sat here bragging of his money to me—and that he might spend a couple of thousand a year if he liked. As if I cared! But if it's going to be yours, mama—two thousand a year—I do care. I do!"
"But we can't think only of ourselves, Bessie," Deleah, horrified, put in.
"We've got to think of mama. She could never endure it."
"She should have thought of that before," Bessie said. "Mama should not have been so sly and underhand—"
"Bessie! Bessie! You can't mean what you say."