“In addition to their eighty?” said I. “Why, then, there is an end of going shares.”
Sara coughed and stammered for a moment over this, quite at fault; but not being troubled either about logic or consistency, soon plunged on again as bold as ever.
“Whatever you say, godmamma, people can live quite comfortable on a hundred a year. I have reckoned it all up; and I don’t see really any reason why anybody should have more. Only fancy what a quantity of hundreds a year you and godmamma Sarah might distribute if you would. And, instead of that, you only build a few cottages and give a few people work—work! as if they had not as good a right as anybody to their living. People were not born only to work, and to be miserable, and to die.”
“People were born to do a great many harder things than you think for, Sara,” said I. “Do you think I am going to argue with a little velvet kitten like you? I advise you to try your twelve families on the twelve hundreds a year. But what do you suppose you would do if your godmamma and I, having no heirs, left the Park to you, and you had your will, and might do what you pleased?”
What put this into my head I cannot say; but I gave it utterance on the spur of the moment. Sara stared at me for a moment, with her pretty mouth falling a little open in astonishment. Then she jumped up and clapped her hands. “Do, godmamma!” she cried out, “oh do; such a glorious scatter I should make! everybody should have enough, and we’d build the loveliest little chapel in existence to St. Millicent, if there is such a saint. I have always thought it would be perfectly delightful to be a great heiress. Godmamma, do!”
To see her all sparkling with delight and eagerness quite charmed me. Had she ever heard a hint of being left heiress to the Park, of course she must have looked wretched and conscious. Anybody would that had thought of such a great acquisition. Sara had not an idea of that. She thought it the best fun possible. She clapped her hands and cried, “Do, godmamma!” She was as bold as an innocent young lion, without either guile or fear.
“It should be tied down so that you could not part with a single acre, nor give away above five pounds at a time,” said I.
“Ah!” said Sara, thoughtfully; “I dare say there would be a way of cheating you somehow though, godmamma,” she said, waking up again with a touch of malice. “People are always cheated after they are dead. I knew a dear old lady that would not have her portrait taken for anybody but one friend whom she loved very much; but, what do you think? after she was gone they found the wicked wretch of a photographic man that kept the thing,—the negative they call it,—and printed scores of portraits, and let everybody have one. I would have given my little finger to have had one; but to go and cheat her, and baulk her after she was dead, and all for love, that is cruel. I would rather go against what you said right out, godmamma, than go against what I knew was in your heart.”
“Ah, Sara, you don’t know anything about it,” said I. “If you had a great deal of money all to yourself, and could do anything you liked with it,—as heaven knows you may have soon enough!—and were just as foolish with it as you intend, how disgusted you would be with your charity, to be sure, after a while! What a little misanthrope you would grow! What mercenary, discontented wretches you would think all the people! I think I can see you fancying how much good you are doing, and yet doing only harm instead. Then that disagreeable old fellow, experience, would take you in hand. The living are cheated as well as the dead. We are all cheated, and cheat ourselves. Nothing would make me go and have my portrait taken; but I don’t deny if I found out that people had got it spontaneously, and handed it about among themselves all for love, I should not be angry. You are a little goose. You don’t know what manner of spirit you are of.”
“It is very easy talking, godmamma,” said Sara. “I was watching yesterday when godmamma Sarah went out for her drive. The groom and the boy were hard at work ever so long with the carriage and horses before it was ready. I saw them out of the window of Alice’s room while she was mending my dress for me. Then came old Jacob to the door with the carriage. Then came godmamma Sarah leaning on Carson’s arm to go downstairs. So there were two great horses and four human creatures,—three men and a woman,—all employed for ever so long to give one old lady a half-hour’s drive, when a walk would have done her twenty times as much good,” concluded the child hastily, under her breath.