Nervous and shy, he shrank from the society of women; but it was impossible to be shy with the irresponsible little widow, who confided all her troubles to him on the first day of their acquaintance, and asked his advice with tears in her pretty eyes. To his amazement, he found himself confiding his own troubles in return, and the ready sympathy accorded to them seemed the sweetest thing in the world. A month after their first meeting he asked her to be his wife, explaining honestly his financial position, and the uncertainty of improvement in the future.
“But you will help me!” he said. “The money will go twice as far when you hold the purse!”
And Mrs Farrell agreed with ardour, unabashed by previous failures. She went to her new home full of love and gratitude, and, let it be said at once, never had cause to regret the step in after years.
Ernest Connor was a devoted husband, and a most kindly father to the two little girls; but life was not easy. It was a constant strain to make ends meet, and as Trix, and Betty, and Drummond, and Ransome, and Bruce came in quick succession to fill the nursery, the strain grew even more and more acute.
The elder girls had been educated at a neighbouring high school, but left as soon as they were seventeen, and after that there was no money to spare for music and painting lessons, such as most girls continue as an interest and occupation long after schooldays are over.
Ruth and Mollie were kept busy teaching the babies and making clothes for the family—cutting down Trix’s dress to do duty for Betty; laboriously planning little pairs of knickers out of trousers worn at the knees; patching, darning, covering-up, hiding over, turning and twisting; making up something out of nothing, with the lordly sum of fifteen pounds a year each for dress and pocket-money alike. They had never known the luxury, dear to girlish hearts, of choosing a garment simply because it was pretty or becoming. Dark, useful remnants were their lot; sailor-hats in summer, cloth toques in winter; stout, useful boots, and dogskin gloves which stood a year’s hard wear.
Many a time over had Mollie stretched forth hands and feet for her sister’s inspection, quoting derisively—
“‘Her thickly—made country shoes could not conceal the slender contour of her ankles; her rough gloves served only to reveal the patrician beauty of her hands.’ Look at that, my love—there’s contour for you! There’s patrician beauty! What rubbish those books do talk, to be sure!”
Many a time had the girls groaned together over their impecuniosity, and vaguely vowed to “do something” to remedy their condition, until at last Ruth’s unrest had reached the point of action, and she determined to seize the first opportunity of a private conference with her mother.
It was not easy to secure a tête-à-tête in the house of Connor. On this particular evening, Trix was practising scales on the piano in the drawing-room, while Mollie read a novel, and Betty lolled on the rug; the three boys were busy at lessons, or, as they eloquently described it, “stewing,” round the dining-room table. Mr Connor was smoking his pipe and reading the evening papers in his den at the back of the house; and the little, white-faced mother moved incessantly from room to room, no sooner settled in one place than she was seized with an anxious presentiment that she was needed elsewhere.