“Should you be sorry to go away?”
“Oh, never sorry to go home,” said Mary, with a gleam of light in her face. “I’d rather starve with them than feast with others—but so long as it is an ease to poor papa’s mind. He is not so strong as he was—he is getting old.”
“About my age, I suppose?” said Lord Frogmore.
“Oh, a great deal more, certainly a great deal more!” cried Mary. She gave, however, a sidelong glance at Lord Frogmore’s face to make quite sure. “And he has had a hard life. That makes a man old more than years.”
“You were good enough to say the same thing before,” said the old lord, “that age cannot be counted by years. That is always a pleasant thing to be said by the young to the old.”
“But I am not young,” said Mary, with a little, frank laugh. “I am middle-aged, which many people think is the worst of all.”
“In that case I must borrow your formula, and say age is not counted by years,” said the old gentleman. “You have a face on which peace is written. You have not had much trouble, I think, in your life.”
Mary grew very serious, for this is an imputation which few people can accept without a protest. But as she was very sincere she assented, after a moment, “No; only being poor. And what is that when all the boys, thank God, have done so well?”
“Is that the only trouble you can think of?” said Lord Frogmore.
“The chief—the greatest. When you have to be ashamed of a brother, or to watch him going wrong, and able to do nothing, and never to trust him. There is nothing in the world so dreadful as that. I can forgive Letitia anything,” cried Mary, almost with vehemence, “when I think how well all our boys have done, and that two of the Ravelstones—— That is the most dreadful of all.”