Then it struck Florence that Lucy’s hesitancy might arise from reluctance to give up all hope of Charlie’s return, so she added hastily—
“And if what we all hope for should really happen, why, you would still have your capital, and you could buy another leasehold and get new furniture; it would just make a lovely new beginning!”
Lucy shook her head.
“I don’t want to do this if I can find some other way,” she said. “No other house could be to us what this one is, nor any new furniture that which Charlie and I bought bit by bit in our courting days. Practically speaking, too, breakings-up and sales, and buyings again, all mean loss in cash as well as in feelings.”
“Then, too, if you and the boy were boarding,” Florence went on hurriedly, “your wants would be drawn within narrow and defined limits, so that if there was any sort of misfortune, it would not be difficult for us to help you. We are not really rich, Lucy. We live as we do and spend as we do only that we may go on getting more. That is the way with one-half of the people in society. It’s trying. It tells upon Jem, it’s that which makes him take so much wine,” she whispered. “I should not like my family to heap any burdens on Jem.”
“I shall not do that, Florence,” replied Lucy, cool and quiet now, where once she would have been indignant and stung. “I shall certainly not allow myself to get into debt. I will look well ahead. If we have to go to the workhouse, I will make our own arrangements for going there!”
Other people took counsel with Lucy in a far different spirit. Miss Latimer said Lucy might rely on her remaining with her as long as they could possibly share a common home. That added her little income to the household funds. “Little indeed,” she said, but Lucy answered—
“Every little helps. And the greatest help is in the knowledge that one does not bear one’s burden alone.”
“Ay, two are better than one,” rejoined the old governess, “and a threefold cord is not quickly broken.”
“I’d like to be the third cord, but I’m only a bit of twine,” said Tom.