“November air! Dulwich November air! How can you talk of it, Dan! This part of the village is full of damp and fog,” Mrs. Webster complained ungraciously. “If I could be in the South of France——”
“I wonder if it could be managed?” said Dan. “We must go into figures. I don’t see why you couldn’t go.”
“But I should have to take your Aunt Lizzie to look after me, and there would be no one to take care of the house. If Isabel had not been so obstinate about doing school work she might have attended to her mother.”
“You are tired and ill, or you would not talk so, mother,” Dan told her. “You know how pluckily Isabel went out to earn, because I made so little. But she need not now.”
Isabel intervened.
“I shall not leave the James Allen, Dan, however much you get on. I like my independence too well to give it up. Moreover, Aunt Lizzie looks after mother far better than I could. There is no reason why mother and Aunt Lizzie should not go to the South of France if you can manage it. Mary Ann can look after us well enough.”
Mrs. Webster began to shed tears at this point.
“It is hard that my children should want to get rid of me, and banish me to a foreign land,” she said in a faltering voice. “You both want to get me far away. Well, I suppose I am a trouble. The house would be a lot brighter without me. Let me go, and if my bones have to be laid in a foreign soil, I suppose it won’t much matter, though I have picked the spot in Norwood Cemetery where I would desire to be laid.”
“Maria! come to bed!”
Miss Linkin spoke with some severity.