“There aren’t anything wrong about the money, is there?” she said anxiously. “I’m always afraid, now your dear father aren’t here, to hold it all together.”
“Oh, it is all solid enough!” replied Katherine, with some bitterness. “I merely asked you, would you dislike being poor if you were so?”
“Well, my dear,” replied Mrs. Massarene, crossing her hands on her lap, “I can’t say as I should like it. When I went over to Kilrathy I did wish as how I’d stayed milkin’ all my days. But that’s neither here nor there, and the past is spilled milk as nobody can lap up, not even a cat. But, to be honest with ye, I think there’s a good deal of pleasantness about money, and living well, and being warm in winter and cool in summer, and seein’ everybody hat in hand as ’twere. No, my dear, I shouldn’t like to be poor; and you wouldn’t either, if you’d ever known what ’twas.”
Katherine was silent. She had not expected any other answer, yet she was disappointed.
“But,” she said, after a few moments—“but, my dear mother, I think you know, I think you must know, that this vast amount of money and possessions which we inherit——”
“Which you inherit,” said Mrs. Massarene with a little asperity. “I’m struck out——”
“You or I, it is the same thing,” said Katherine. “You must know, I think, that—that—it was not very creditably gained. You must, I suppose, have known many things and many details of my father’s life in Kerosene; of his early life, at any rate; of the foundations of his wealth.”
“Perhaps I did and perhaps I didn’t,” said her mother rather sullenly. “Your good father never consulted me, my dear, and if I’d put myself forward he’d have locked me up in the coal cellar, and left me there.”
“No doubt he never consulted you,” said Katherine. “But it is impossible that living with him, and working for him as you have often told me you did, you can have been wholly ignorant of the beginning of his rise to wealth. You must know very much of the ways by which he first acquired it.”
Her mother was moved by divided feelings, of which, however, vexation was the chief. She was embarrassed because she was a very honest woman; but at the same time her buried lord was purified and exalted in her eyes. Had not a bishop laid him in his grave?