Fay went with him to the door; she was crying again, and she clung to him as he bade her a fond farewell. But even lovers' farewells must end at last, for trains and tides do not wait for them. And in another minute, the door had closed and Harry was gone, while in Fay's ears were ringing his last words, "Be true to me, Fay, be true!"
* * * * * *
"Oh dear me! Was ever a poor mother in such a dilemma? Just look here, girls! Another letter from the lawyer, and again bad news!" And Mrs. Grayling heaved a gusty sigh, and, sinking into the nearest arm-chair, stretched out a big, bony hand, in which was displayed the unwelcome letter, open to any one who wished to read it.
It was snatched from her, half playfully, half impatiently, by Mattie, a tall young woman of about five-and twenty, rather bony and angular, like the mother, but with a clever, sensible face, that atoned for her rather masculine figure, and bore no trace of the fretful anxieties that had made lines in Mrs. Grayling's worn countenance.
"Let me see too," said Lettie, who was a round, good-tempered-looking, sleepy-eyed, tow-haired girl of twenty-three or thereabouts; and she rose from her seat and came round behind Mattie, in order to read the letter over her shoulder. Margie, who was twenty-one years old; Fay, who was eighteen; and Nat, who was between nineteen and twenty, completed the family party; and all were eagerly waiting for the news in the lawyer's letter.
"Yes, mother, it is hard on you!" said Mattie, as she ran her eye through the one closely written page. "Only three months ago you heard that your income was to be reduced a hundred pounds a year, and now the value of the investments seems to have again fallen, and you are to lose another hundred, and probably more."
"I hardly know what I shall do," said Mrs. Grayling. "When your dear father was alive, he always attended to business matters, and even the household accounts; but now I am burdened with so many things, and what with this reduction of income and the increasing expenses of Fan's and Eva's schooling, I really do not know how I shall make both ends meet, unless—unless—"
"I know what you are going to say, mother," interrupted Margie. "Unless some of us marry, and take ourselves off your hands."
"Yes, my dear, that is just what I was going to say, and I think you will see that for one or two of you to have homes of your own would save my pocket and lift a load of care from my heart."
"Poor mother!" said Margie, coming nearer, and putting an arm round her mother's gaunt shoulders. "I daresay it would be a good thing, as you say; but it takes two to make a marriage, as it does a quarrel, and you see we have no gay cavaliers to serenade and carry us off; and even Fay's sailor boy," added Margie, with a sudden flush on her clear cheek, "is of no practical use at present."