She had been willing enough to give due credit to Sarah Evans, but she wished to do all the praising herself. She was quick enough to see that the girl had made her children very happy, and, with a strange mixture of feeling, was grateful for the doing, yet annoyed that this should have been the work of a mere stranger.
Conscience often pricked her for sharp ways and words. Her deputy's experience proved that cleanliness, order, and obedience might be maintained by joining kindness to firmness. Yet Mrs. Livesey could not forgive Sarah for succeeding in things where she had so often failed. From that day forward, she resolved that the memory of Sarah's rule in the household should be blotted out as rapidly as possible. In time she succeeded so far as to keep the children from talking about her, and when the young woman came to the house, she so managed that, without showing her any incivility, she prevented the girl from wishing to repeat the visit.
A busy time followed Mrs. Livesey's return. The active mother knew no rest until she had the pleasure of seeing her husband in new garments, her children's wardrobes renovated, her house re-arranged to suit the additions made in the way of furniture.
Then she looked with pride and satisfaction after little Maggie as she went off to the Sunday school between Jessie and Alice Mitchell, and said, "There! I can send my girl out as nice as her neighbours. I've got the desire of my heart at last."
How fared it with Adam in the meanwhile?
If the truth must be told—not over-well. In the old days, if any one had said that more than eight shillings per week would be added to the family income, Adam would have been quite certain that nothing but good could be the result of the increase.
After a short experience, he was not quite so sure.
Margaret had nothing beyond human resolutions and human strength to enable her to bear this sudden prosperity with meekness. She was hardly the one to do it. She was, as her husband told Richard Evans in confidence, "a bit set up."
She was proud that the money had come from her side. She was a little self-willed in the use of it, and, seeing that she had never consulted her husband about the application of his own earnings, she did not ask his advice as to spending what was, she considered, doubly her own.
She had one or two rash plans for laying out a portion of the capital so as to bring in more interest, but fortunately Mr. Collinge persuaded her to let the money stay where it was, on a well-secured mortgage at five per cent.