“Poverty!” repeated his wife; “but nothing like poverty comes near her, or any of them,—at least it is not as bad as that.”
“No, no. I should not have used the word. I should rather have said, as I did to her, of not being rich.”
“Charlotte does not seem herself,” said Mrs Waldron. “I wonder if anything is troubling her.”
“She is waking up, perhaps,” said the father, “and that is a painful process sometimes. Though she is so clever, she is wonderfully young for her age too. Life has been smooth for her, even though we are so poor—not rich,” he corrected with a smile.
“But is there anything special on her mind? What made you talk in that way?”
“She will be telling you herself of some report—oh, I dare say it is true enough—that Lady Mildred Osbert is arranging to send this niece of hers, this girl whom, as I told you, she is said to have adopted, to Miss Lloyd’s. And of course they are all gossiping about it, chattering about the girl’s beauty and magnificence, and all the rest of it. After all, Amy, I sometimes wish we had not sent Charlotte to school at all; there seems always to be silly chatter.”
“But what could we do? We could not possibly have afforded a governess—for one girl alone; and I, even if I had the time, I am not highly educated enough myself to carry on so very clever a girl as Charlotte.”
“No; I sometimes wish she were less clever. She might have been more easily satisfied.”
“But she is not dissatisfied,” said Mrs Waldron. “On the contrary, she has seemed more than content, she is full of interest and energy. I have been so glad she was clever; it is so much easier for a girl with decidedly intellectual tastes to be happy in a circumscribed life like ours.”
“Yes, in one sense. But Charlotte has other tastes too. She would enjoy the beauty, the completeness of life possible when people are richer, intensely. And at school she has been made a sort of pet and show pupil of. It will be trying to a girl of fifteen to see a new queen in her little world.”