"I wonder what's to become of me while you're having your interesting interview with Scrooge?" Bessie said at dinner-time. "It's raining, so I can't go out for a walk."
"I am going for one," Mrs. Day said, having decided on that course at the instant of announcing the intention.
"But I thought Scrooge was coming?"
"I know. I can't see him. I really can't. You see him for me, Bessie."
"Really, mama, how absurd! Is the old man wanting to marry me? Are you to have the billing and cooing by proxy?"
There was no mistake about it, adversity had not improved Bessie; her mother had to admit to herself that she was even sometimes vulgar. "You might have spared me that, I think, Bessie," poor Mrs. Day said. She was deeply offended and hurt. She would not wait to finish her dinner, but went down into the shop and busied herself there till Mr. Pretty had put the shutters up. Then she dressed herself in the widow's bonnet she still wore, the shabby silk mantle with its deep border of crape, the black gloves so much the worse for wear, and saying no further word to Bessie went out.
"Of course I know where she's gone," said Bessie to Emily, her unfailing confidante. "To Franky's grave. It isn't the place to make her a lively companion when she comes back again; and it isn't very cheerful for me to have to sit at home and think of her there."
"'Tis mother-like, Miss Bessie." Franky's grave held attraction for Emily also, who visited it every Sunday of her life.
"Yes, but, Emily, oughtn't mama to think of me as well as of Franky? And I've no patience with her. I think she ought to make up her mind, and have done with it. Quite young girls, with all their lives before them, make marriages for money, why should she make such a fuss?"
"The young ones don't know what they're a-doing, perhaps; and your ma does," the sage Emily hazarded.