"I wonder if I shall know the flavor of butcher's meat if I ever taste it again?" says Robert presently, with exaggerated exertion hacking a cumbrous limb that covers his cracked plate—a plate which a china-collector would have treasured in a cabinet.
"You certainly won't taste butcher's meat again until the butcher's bill is paid," answers Aunt Jo sharply. "Thirteen pounds eleven and sixpence—so he sent me word when Sarah tried to get a mutton-chop for Lottie the day she was so ill. Until his bill is paid, he won't trust us with another pound of flesh; that was the message he sent to me—to me—Josephine Darcy! Oh that I should live to receive such a message from a tradesman! What would my dear uncle the bishop have felt if he could have heard it?"
"But he can't hear it, auntie dear," says Lottie, consolingly. "He's dead, you know."
"Not dead, but gone before," reproves Miss Darcy, burying her face in her handkerchief.
"Water-works again!" groans Robert, sotto voce. "Use the plug, some one."
Addie obeys the elegant order by slipping her arm round the old lady's neck.
"There, there, dear; don't take on so. You fret too much about us; you'll make yourself ill in the end. Cheer up, auntie dear, cheer—"
"Cheer up!" she interrupts, in a wailing voice. "Oh, child, it is easy for you to talk in that light way! Cheer up, when poverty is at the door, starvation staring us in the face! Cheer up, when I look at you five neglected, deserted children, growing up half fed, wholly uneducated, clothed as badly as the poorest laborer on the vast estates your grandfather owned—you my poor dead sister's children! Oh, Addie, Addie, you talk and feel like a child—a child of the summer, who has not the sense, the power to feel the chill breath of coming winter! How can you know? How can you understand? You heard your brothers and your sisters here grumbling and railing at me not five minutes ago because I had not legs of mutton and ribs of beef to feed you with, grumbling because this is the fourth time in one week you have had to dine off rabbit. Well"—with a sudden burst of anguish—"do you know, if Steve Higgins, devoted retainer that he is, had not the kindness, the forethought to supply us, as he has been doing for the last month, with the surplus of his warren, you'd have had to dine off bread and vegetables altogether? For not a scrap of solid food will they supply us with in Nutsford until my wretched dividends are due, and that is four months off yet. Oh, Addie dear, don't try to talk to me; I can bear up no longer! Sorrows have come to me too late in life. I—I can bear up no longer!"
Her voice dies away in hysterical sobs. By this time the family are grouped round the afflicted lady; even Robert's hard young arm encircles her heaving shoulder. He joins as vehemently as any in the sympathizing chorus.
"There, there; don't, auntie dear. Heaven will help us, you'll see!"