“But are they engaged?”
“No. Miles told me that he would not presume to ask her while he had no home to offer her.”
“Pooh! He’s a goose! He ought to make sure of her, and let the home look after itself. He may lose her. Girls, you know, are changeable, giddy things!”
“I know nothing of the sort, Emmy.”
The young wife laughed, and—well, there is no need to say what else she did.
About the same time, Mrs Milton and her son were seated in another private room of the Institute finishing off that interchange of confidences which had begun in such confusion. As it happened, they were conversing on the same subject that occupied Emmy and her husband.
“You have acted rightly, Miles,” said the mother, “for it would have been unfair and selfish to have induced the poor girl to accept you until you had some prospect of a home to give her. God will bless you for doing the right, and trusting to Him. And now, dear boy, are you prepared for bad news?”
“Prepared for anything!” answered Miles, pressing his mother’s hand, “but I hope the bad news does not affect you, mother.”
“It does. Your dear father died a bankrupt. I shrank from telling you this when you were wounded and ill. So you have to begin again the battle of life with only one hand, my poor boy, for the annuity I have of twenty pounds a year will not go far to keep us both.”
Mrs Milton tried to speak lightly on this point, by way of breaking it to her son, but she nearly broke down, for she had already begun to feel the pinch of extreme poverty, and knew it to be very, very different from what “well-off” people fancy. The grave manner in which her son received this news filled her with anxiety.