“But are you in any especial difficulty at this moment, Sourisette?” asked her brother in a very kind and tender tone intended to invite her confidence.
“What is especial with other people is chronic with me,” she replied pettishly. “My worries and miseries are as eternal as Poodle’s youth and courtships.”
“But do you want money—well, more than usual?”
“I always want it,” replied Mouse. “Everybody always wants it, except you.”
“I know you always say that. I want it very much just now. But if it’s anything for the children——”
“You are a model uncle out of a fairy book! No; it is not for the mites; they get their bread and milk and mutton chops—as yet. It is, it is—well, if you really care to know, these people are horribly rude and pressing, and I haven’t even a hundred pounds to throw them as a sop.”
She leaned back toward her writing-table which stood beside the hearth, and, tossing its litter of paper to and fro, took from the chaos a letter from a famous firm of Bond Street tradesmen, and gave it to her brother.
“As he is in the mood he may as well pay something,” she thought. “It would be a pity not to bleed the miser when one can.”
Lord Hurstmanceaux ran his eyes quickly over the letter, and a pained look passed over his face, an expression of annoyance and regret.
She was Kenilworth’s wife, and had been long out of her brother’s guardianship, but it hurt him to think that she exposed herself to these insults, these importunities, these humiliations.