“My love,” she said, in the tone of one asking a great favour, “have I your permission to give these dear children some bread and jam?”
“Oh yes, of course,” Florence answered, not looking up from the long letter she was reading.
Aunt Anne, quick to notice, saw that it had a foreign postmark and an enclosure that looked like a cheque. Then she cut some bread and took off the crust before she spread a quantity of butter on the dainty slices, and piled on the top of the butter as much jam as they could carry.
“Oh!” cried the children, with gleeful surprise.
“Dear Aunt Anne,” exclaimed Florence, looking up when she heard it, “I never give them quite so much butter with quite so much jam. It is too rich for them, and we don’t cut off the crusts.”
“The servants will eat them.”
“Indeed they will not,” laughed Florence; “they don’t like crusts.”
“You are much too good to them, love, as you are to every one. They should do as they are told, and be glad to take what they can get. I never have patience with the lower classes,” she added, in the gentlest of voices.
But the words gave Florence a sudden insight into the possible reason of Aunt Anne’s collapse at Mrs. North’s, a catastrophe to which the old lady never referred. The very mention of Mrs. North’s name made her manner a little distant.
“And then, you know,” Florence said, for she was always careful, and now especially, in order to make the very short allowance on which she had put herself in her husband’s absence hold out, “we must not let the children learn to be dainty, must we? So they must try to eat up the crusts of their bread; and we only give them a little butter when they have jam. I never had butter and jam together at all at home,” and she stroked Catty’s fat little hand while she went on reading her letter. “Grandma has written from France, my babes,” she said, looking up after a few minutes; “she sends you each a kiss and five shillings to spend.”