'I wish Cyril could hear you say that. But he knows—he feels—I have done my best for him. Yes, my darling, I have indeed!' She clasped her hands and sighed. 'What did a little extra work, a few sacrifices, matter, when one looked to the future? We were very straitened—the poor children did not always have what they needed—but I don't think we were, any of us, unhappy.'

'I can so well understand that. I think people are too much afraid of being poor. I could never see, myself, why poverty should hinder happiness.'

'Do you not?' looking at her a little curiously; 'but you have not served my apprenticeship. You do not know how hard it is for a pleasure-loving nature to be deprived of so many sources of enjoyment—to have to stint one's taste for pretty things—to be perpetually saying "no" to one's self.'

'And yet you own that you were happy.'

'Well, yes, after a fashion. I think the poor children were, until Kester got so ill. Mollie and I used to walk about Richmond Park and build castles in the air. We planned what we would do if we were rich, and sometimes we would amuse ourselves by looking into the shop-windows and thinking what we should like to buy—like a couple of gutter children—and sometimes, on a winter's evening, we would blow out the candles and sit round the fire and tell stories.'

'And then you say Kester fell ill?'

'Well, it was not exactly an illness. But he seemed to dwindle and pine, somehow, and Cyril and I got dreadfully anxious about him. I don't think Richmond suited him, and I could not give him the comforts he needed; and he fretted so about his want of education. He seemed to get better directly we went to Headingly and Cyril began to give him lessons.'

'Yes, I see;' and then Audrey took advantage of the pause to look at her watch. It was later than she thought, and she rose reluctantly to go. Mrs. Blake rose too.

'Don't you think me an odd, unconventional sort of person to tell you all this?' she asked a little abruptly. 'Do you know, Cyril often says that I make him very anxious, because I am so dreadfully impulsive and speak out everything I think; but I made up my mind that afternoon when Cyril told me that Mrs. Bryce was a connection of your sister's that I would talk to you about the Headingly worries on the first opportunity.'

'I am very glad you have spoken to me; I think it was very brave of you.'