"Perhaps time will be found for me to go tomorrow; mamma said so. It will be only sixpence then."
"And today it's a shilling, I suppose?"
"Yes."
Mr. Lake nodded his head once or twice in a rather marked manner, but did not give utterance to his thoughts, whatever they might be. Anna resumed.
"I do all the work I can--of sewing and other kinds. It has cost mamma so much to get into this house, with the new things she has been obliged to buy, that she says she is nearly ruined. With Lady Ellis here, and only two servants, we could not get along at all but for my looking to everything."
Mr. Lake went off muttering something about Penelope's selfishness. That Anna was put upon quite like another Cinderella he had long known, and his sense of fairness rose up against it.
"If the girl was a tyrant she'd not have stood it for a day," he cried, as he flung himself down on a bench and raked the gravel with his cane. "A meek temper is a misfortune."
A short while, and he heard the keys of the piano touched in the drawing-room; a soft, sweet, musical voice broke out gently in song. He knew it for Anna's. She had finished her work, and was snatching a moment for music, having come in to get the table ready for tea. The open piano tempted her. Mr. Lake listened through the song--an old one; and put his head in at the window as she was rising.
"Sing another for me, Anna."
She started round with a blush. To believe you are singing for yourself, and then to find you have an audience, is not agreeable.