"In losing papa?" said Janey, catching her breath.
"Yes, yes, in losing him," wailed Jane. "For that includes more than you suspect. But I wish to allude more particularly to the future. My dears, I do not see what is to become of us. We have no money; and we have no one to give us any or to lend us any; no one in the wide world."
The children did not interrupt; only William moved his chair nearer to hers. She looked so young in her widow's cap: nearly as young as when, years ago, she had married him who had that day been put out of her sight for ever.
"If we can only keep a roof over our heads," continued Jane, speaking very softly from the effort to subdue her threatening emotion, "we may perhaps struggle on. Perhaps. But it will be struggling; and you do not know half that the word implies. We may not have enough to eat. We may be cold and hungry—not once, but constantly; and we shall certainly have to encounter and endure the slights and humiliations attendant on extreme poverty. I do not know that we can retain a home; for we may, in a week or two, be turned from this."
"But why be turned from this, mamma?"
"Because there is rent owing, and I have not the means to pay it," she answered. "I have written to your uncle Francis, but I do not believe he will be able to help me. He——"
"Why can't we go back to London to live?" eagerly interrupted little Gar. "It was so nice there! It was a better home than this."
"You forget, Gar, that—that——" here she almost broke down, and had to pause a minute—"that our income there was earned by papa. He would not be there to earn it now. No, my dear ones; I have thought the future over in every way—thought until my brain has become confused—and the only possible chance that I can see, of our surmounting difficulties, so as to enable us to exist, is by endeavouring to keep this home. Patience suggests that I should let part of it. I had already thought of that; and I shall endeavour to do so. It may cover the rent and taxes. And I must try and do something else that will find us food."
The children looked perfectly thunderstruck, especially the two elder ones, William and Jane. "Do something to find food!" they uttered, aghast. "Mamma, what do you mean?"
It is so difficult to make children understand these unhappy things—those who have been brought up in comfort. Jane sighed, and explained further. Little desolate hearts they were who listened to her.