As the soft September twilight stole over the room, the girls became more silent. Waveney seemed buried in thought, and Mollie, tired out with laughing, nestled against her comfortably, and very nearly went to sleep. But she was roused effectually by Waveney's next speech.
"Sweetheart"—her pet name for Mollie—"I am going to make you miserable, I am afraid, but I have been telling myself all day long that we must face the situation. If father does not get a good price for his picture, what are we to do?"
"But he must sell it," returned Mollie, in a distressed voice. "Barker is getting disagreeable about his bill, and his man says nasty things to Ann when he leaves the meat. And we owe Chandler for two tons of coal."
"Yes, I know;" and Waveney sighed heavily. "Those two tons have been on my mind all day."
"You poor dear, no wonder you looked tired. Ah, how hateful and mean it is to be poor! Ah, you are not as wicked and rebellious as I am, Wave. I sometimes cry with the longing for the pretty things other girls have. I cannot resign myself to the idea of being shabby and pinched and careworn all my life long. If this goes on we shall be old women before our time; when I am ordering dinner I feel nearly a hundred."
Waveney stroked the glossy brown head that rested against her shoulder, but made no other answer: she was thinking how she could best break some unwelcome news to Mollie. Mollie was emotional, and cried easily, and her father always hated to see one of his girls unhappy. "Father would cut the moon up into little pieces and give them to us, if he could," she thought; "nothing is too good for us. But when Mollie frets he takes it so to heart. Oh dear, if only doing one's duty were made easier; but there is no 'learning or reading without tears' in the Handbook of Life;" and then she set her little white teeth together firmly, as a child does when some nauseous medicine is offered.
"Mollie, dear, I cannot keep it back any longer—it makes me miserable to have a secret from you. I have been to Harley Street to-day, and talked to Miss Warburton, and she has something on her books that is likely to suit me."
Then the sob she dreaded to hear rose to poor Mollie's lips.
"Ah, Wave, you can't really mean it! This is worst of all. It is positively dreadful. How am I to live without you? And father, and Noel, what are they to do?" and here the tears rolled down her face; but Waveney, who had been schooling herself all day, refused to be moved from her stoicism.
"Mollie, please listen to me. It is childish to cry. Do you remember our last talk—the one we had in the Lime Walk, and how we agreed that we must do all we could to help father!"