"Yes, just it. I don't know what is to be required of me—I really don't see how I am to earn my salt."
"Don't bother yourself about that." He frowned slightly. "I confess this insistence on Ewart's part to pay you, complicates matters a little. I wanted to be boss this time."
"And I hoped you would be mine, anyway," I said mutinously. "I am far from satisfied to have my business dealings with Mr. Ewart, a stranger and an alien."
"It will be only for a time; I am going to tell you, all of you, about my farm plans this evening. I have n't spoken yet to Ewart very freely about them."
The horses were turned homewards, and I felt that little time was left me to ask any intimate questions of the Doctor concerning myself. I could not find the right word—and I knew I was not trying with any degree of earnestness. "I 'll put it off till the last of the week," I said to myself; then I began to speak of that self, for I knew the Doctor was waiting for this and, wisely, was biding my time. I was grateful to him.
I told him of my hard-worked young years and my longing to get away to independence. I entered into no family details; it was not necessary. I told him something of my struggle in New York and of my place in the Branch Library; of my long illness and how it had left me: tired out, listless, practically homeless and in need of immediate money. I told him how I sought Delia Beaseley on the strength of the advertisement; how she helped me; how I felt I had found release from the city and its burden of livelihood, and how happy I was with my new duties in the old manor house; how the fact that it was an old manor fed the vein of romance in me which neither hard work nor illness had been able to work out; how I enjoyed Jamie and Mrs. Macleod, Angélique, and Pierre and all the household—and how I had dreaded his coming, yet longed for it, because it would unsettle my future which was not to be in the manor house of Lamoral.
I told him all this, freely; but to speak of my mother, of my birth, of the papers, and of what I wanted them for, was beyond me. The secret of the Past, projected on the possible Future, loomed gigantic, threatening. I would let well enough alone.
"You poor child," he said, when I finished. That was all; but I knew that henceforth I should have a friend in Doctor Rugvie. He drove the rest of the way in silence.