“I hope it will teach her a lesson,” said Mrs. Ford; “a woman at that age with pleasure never out of her head. Oh, I could forgive a child like you! You have not learned yet what vanity and vexation of spirit it all is, but a woman with children grown up, I wonder she is not ashamed of herself! and a fine company of draggle-tails you must have been when you came home. If I were Mr. Rushton I should give my wife a piece of my mind. I would not allow nor countenance for a moment such silly goings-on.”
“Mrs. Rushton did not do it for herself, Aunt Ford.”
“Oh, don’t tell me! Do you suppose she’d do it if she didn’t like it? Do you ever catch me at that sort of folly? I almost wished you to get something that would disgust you with such nonsense; but nothing will convince you, Lucy, nothing will make you see that it is your money, and only your money—”
How glad Lucy was when the meal was over, and she could escape upstairs! how thankful to have that pink drawing-room to take refuge in, though it was not a lovely place! Jock came with her, clinging to her hand. Jock’s eyes were bigger than ever as he raised them to his sister’s face, and she on her part clung to him, too, little though he was. She held Jock close to her, and gave him a tremendous kiss when they entered that lonely little domain in which they spent so much of their lives. When the door was closed and everything shut out, even the voices of the household which lived for them, yet had nothing to do with them, this room represented the world to Lucy and Jock. Even with the household they had no special tie—not even a servant attached to them, as they might have had if they had been brought up like the children of the rich. But they had been just so brought up that even the consolation of a kind nurse, an attendant of years, was denied to them, in the dismal isolation of that class which is too little raised above its servants to venture to trust them—which dares not to love its inferiors, because they are so very little inferior, yet will not bow to anything as above itself. They had nobody accordingly. Lucy’s maid even had been sent away. Jock had no old nurse to take refuge with; they clung together, the most forlorn young pair. “Is it your money, and only your money,” said the little boy, “as Aunt Ford says?”
“Oh, Jock, how can I tell? I wish you and I had a little cottage somewhere in a wood, or on an island, and could go far away, and never see any one any more!”
And Lucy cried; her spirit was broken, her loneliness seemed to seize upon her all at once, and the sense that she had no one to fall back upon, nobody to whom her money was not the inducement. This was an idea which in her simplicity she had never conceived before. She had thought a great deal of her money, and perhaps she had scarcely formed any new acquaintances without asking herself whether they wanted her help, whether it would be possible to place them upon the privileged list. It had been her favorite notion, the thing that occupied her mind most; but yet Lucy, thinking so much of her money, never thought that it was because of her money that people were kind to her. It had seemed so natural, she was so grateful, and her heart was so open to all that made a claim upon it. And she and Jock were so lonely, so entirely thrown upon the charity of those around them. Therefore she had never thought of her wealth as affecting any one’s opinion of herself. Had any of her friends asked for a share of it, represented themselves or others as in need of it, Lucy would have listened to them with delight, would have given with both hands and a joyful heart, at once gratifying herself and doing her duty according to her father’s instructions. But that her friends should seek her because she was rich, and that one man after another should startle her youth with proposals of marriage because she was rich—this was an idea that had never entered into Lucy’s mind before. “Your money and only your money;” the words seemed to ring in her ears, and when Jock asked, wondering if this were true, she could not make him any reply; oh, how could she tell? oh, that she had wings like a dove, that she might fly away, and hide herself and be at rest! and then she cried. What more could a girl so young and innocent do?
Jock stood by her side, by her knee, and watched her with large serious eyes, which seemed to widen and widen with the strain and dilation of tears; but he would not cry with Lucy. He said slowly in a voice which it took him a great deal of trouble to keep steady, “I do not think that Sir Tom—”
“Oh,” cried Lucy, putting him away from her with a burst of still warmer tears. “Sir Tom! You don’t know, Jock. Sir Tom is unkind, too.”
Jock looked at her, swallowing all his unshed tears with an effort; he looked at her with that scorn which so often fills the mind of a child, to see the want of perception which distinguishes its elders. “Is it you that don’t know,” said Jock. He would not argue the question. He left her, shaking as it might be the dust off his feet, and took the “Heroes” from the table, and threw himself down on his favorite rug. He would not condescend to argue. But after he had read a dozen pages he paused and raised himself upon his elbows, and looked at her with fine contempt. “You!” he said, “you wouldn’t have known the gods if you had seen them. You would have thought Heré was only a big woman. What is the good of talking to you?”
Lucy dried her eyes in great surprise; she was quite startled and shaken by the reproof. She looked at the little oracle with a respect which was mingled at once with awe and with gratitude. If he would but say something more! But, instead of uttering any further deliverance, he dropped his elbows again, and let himself down into the rug, and became altogether unconscious at once of her presence and her difficulties, indifferent as the gods themselves to the sorrows of mortal men.