"Pretty decent, isn't it?" was the gratified reply. "Left me any brekker?"
"Plenty, but be quick, we have to start in twenty minutes."
"Not me, sis. I'm going with Mullins Major to Arundel."
"To Arundel! Oh, no, Tony, you are going with Gerald and me in the car!"
"Not much. This is heaps better. Good old Gerald bought us the ticket—front places, and he has given me half a sov. for our grub. Isn't he great?"
"Oh, Tony!" She stood back as the boy ran down the stairs whistling gaily. "Did Gerald give you that suit, too, and that overwhelmingly elegant hat?"
"He did. Took me into the town the first day we got here and rigged me out."
Virgie burst out laughing. She was so glad that Tony should be young—should put on a bit of "swank." How dear of Gerald to be so good to him!
Money makes life very easy. The thought turned her grave once more. Am I mercenary? she asked herself. Does love of money mean the desire to obtain good doctors and nursing, to educate a boy well, to live cleanly and keep out of debt? With a sigh she admitted that her marriage had been mercenary. Yet how small a share of life's good things would have prevented her from making so hideous a mistake—a mistake which as yet she had hardly begun to pay for. Oh, why, why, had Gerald stepped aside and failed her at the critical moment?
"If I had only had patience, if only I had waited," she told herself, "it would have come right! He as good as told me so that first night we dined together. I ought to have refused to do what I knew to be wrong, and left the consequences to God."