Meanwhile, everybody in the house had gone to bed, except Nora and her father. She had lit a little fire in his study, as the night had grown chilly; she had put a little tray with tea on it by his side, and helped him to arrange the Greats papers, in which he was still immersed, under his hand. And finally she brought his pipe and filled it for him.
“Must you sit up long, father?”
“An hour or two,” said Ewen Hooper wearily. “I wish I didn’t get so limp. But these Honour exams take it out of one. And I have to go to Winchester to-morrow.”
“For the scholarship?”
He nodded.
“Father! you work a great deal too hard—you look dog-tired!” cried Nora in distress. “Why do you do so much?”
He shook his head sadly.
“You know, darling.”
Nora did know. She knew that every pound was of importance to the household, that the temporary respite caused by the legacy from Lord Risborough and by Connie’s prepayment would very soon come to an end, and that her father seemed to be more acutely aware of the position than he had yet been. Her own cleverness, and the higher education she was steadily getting for herself enabled her to appreciate, as no one else in the family could or did, her father’s delicate scholarly gifts, which had won him his reputation in Oxford and outside. But the reputation might have been higher, if so much time had not been claimed year after year by the sheer pressure of the family creditors. With every year, Nora had grown up into a fuller understanding of her father’s tragedy; a more bitter, a more indignant understanding. They might worry through; one way or another she supposed they would worry through. But her father’s strength and genius were being sacrificed. And this child of seventeen did not see how to stop it.
After she had brought him his pipe, and he was drawing at it contentedly over the fire, she stood silent beside him, bursting with something she could not make up her mind to say. He put out an arm, as she stood beside his chair, and drew her to him.