“It wouldn’t be from nowhere else,” answered Margery in vexation. “I have no other kin to pull and tug at me. They’re going on to Wales, she and her son, and she wants me to meet her on the journey to-morrow, just for an hour’s talk. Some people have consciences! Ride a matter of forty mile, and spend a sight o’ money in doing it!”
“Are you speaking of your sister—Mrs. Bray?”
“More’s the pity, I am,” answered Margery. “Selina was always one of the weak ones, ma’am. She says she has been ill again, feels likely to die, and is going to Wales for some months to his friends, to try if the air will benefit her. She’d be ever grateful for a five-pound note, she adds, not having a penny-piece beyond what will take her to her journey’s end. I wonder how much they have had from me in the whole, if it came to be put down!” wrathfully concluded Margery.
“You can have a day’s holiday, you know, Margery, if you wish to meet her on the journey.”
“I must take time to consider,” shortly answered Margery, who was always considerably put out by these applications. “She has been nothing but a trouble to me, ma’am, ever since she married that ne’er-do-well Bray. Now, Miss Meta! you be a good child, and don’t upset the whole cup of coffee over your pinafore, as you did last Sunday morning!”
The parting admonition was addressed to Meta, in conjunction with a slight shake administered to that young lady, under the pretence of resettling her on her chair. Meta was at once the idol and the torment of Margery’s life. Margery withdrew, and Maria, casting her spiritless eyes on the breakfast-table, took a modest piece of dry toast, and put a morsel into her mouth.
But she found some difficulty in swallowing it. Throat and bread were alike dry. She drew the butter towards her, thinking it might help her to eat the toast. No; no. She could not swallow it any more than the other. The fault did not lie there.
“Would Meta like a nice piece of toast?” she asked.
Meta liked anything that was good in the shape of eatables. She nodded her head several times, by way of answer. And Maria spread the toast and passed it to her.
Breakfast came to an end. Maria took the child on her knee, read her a pretty Bible story, her daily custom after breakfast, talked to her a little, and then sent her to the nursery. She, Maria, sat on alone. She heard the bells ring out for service, but they did not ring for her. Maria Godolphin could no more have shown her face in church that day, than she could have committed some desperately wrong act. Under the disgrace which had fallen upon them, it would have seemed, to her sensitive mind, something like an act of unblushing impudence. She gathered her books around her, and strove to make the best of them alone. Perhaps she had scarcely yet realized the great fact that God can be a comforter in the very darkest affliction. Maria’s experience that way was yet limited.