“While Colonel Schuyler is there, Mrs. Sinclair’s time will be occupied with him, and she will not have so much need of me. I will try to see you oftener. I wish I could take you out of this altogether, mother, for I know how distasteful the life is to you after having known one so much better; but my salary is not large, and Mrs. Sinclair will never raise it. It is a principle of hers to give so much and no more. If she were not so kind, I would try for another situation.”
“No, no,” the mother said, in some alarm; “don’t leave Oakwood on any account. I’ve always felt that something would come of your being there. I can do very well as I am, only it was humiliating to have that Mrs. Rogers, who had been in service, come to me for rooms, and act as if she were my equal.”
“I do not see it in that light, mother,” Edith said. “If Mrs. Rogers is respectable, and can pay, I advise you to take her. It is far better to have some one permanently, than the changing, floating class you usually have about you. Beside that, it must be pleasanter to have a decent woman in the house than a lot of foreign men of whom you know nothing. Suppose I speak to Norah, and tell her you will take her cousin if she has not secured apartments elsewhere; and if she wants my old room for her child, let her have it. I do not occupy it often, and would rather some nice little girl was in it than any one else. Yes, I think I’ll speak to Norah.” And without waiting for her mother to object, even if she wished to do so, Edith went hastily down the walk to the carriage waiting for her.
She found Mrs. Sinclair asleep, and Norah mending a lace handkerchief for her outside the door.
“Norah,” she said, “has your cousin, Mrs. Rogers, yet suited herself with lodgings?”
“No, ma’am. She was just here. You must have met her and the little girl somewhere in the park. You would have noticed the child.”
But Edith had been too much occupied with her own thoughts as she drove through the park to see the woman and child sitting on a bench beneath the trees, and looking curiously at her as she drove by.
“No, I met no one,” she said; “but I wish you would see your cousin, and tell her that Mrs. Barrett, of Caledonia Street, No. —, will accommodate her with rooms.”
“Two rooms?” Norah asked.
And Edith replied: