The strain was interrupted, and George, as he ceased it, glanced up. Meta, looking, it must be confessed, rather black about the hands and pinafore, as if Margery had not had time to attend to her within the last hour, came running in. George shut up his knife and held out his arms.
“Papa, are we to have tea at home, or after we get into the lodgings?”
“Ask mamma,” responded George.
“Mamma told me to ask you. She doesn’t know, she says. She’s too busy to talk to me. She’s getting the great box on to the stand.”
“She’s doing what?” cried George in a quick accent.
“Getting the great box on to the stand,” repeated Meta. “She’s going to pack it. Papa, will the lodgings be better than this? Will there be a big garden? Margery says there’ll be no room for my rocking-horse. Won’t there?”
Something in the child’s questions may have grated on the fine ear of George Godolphin, had he stayed to listen to them. However lightly the bankruptcy might be passing over George’s mind on his own score, he regretted its results most bitterly for his wife and child. To see them turned from their home, condemned to descend to the inconveniences and obscurity of these lodgings, was the worst pill George Godolphin had ever had to swallow. He would have cut off his right arm to retain them in their position; ay, and also his left: he could have struck himself to the earth in his rage for the disgrace he had brought on them.
Hastening up the stairs he entered his bedroom. It was in a litter; boxes and wearing-apparel lying about. Maria, flushed and breathless, was making great efforts to drag a cumbrous trunk on to a stand, or small bench, for the convenience of filling it. No very extensive efforts either; for she knew that such might harm her at present in her feeble strength.
George raised the trunk to its place with one lift of his manly arms, and then forced his wife, with more gentleness, into a chair.
“How could you be so imprudent, Maria?” broke from him in a vexed tone, as he stood before her.