After they had talked a few minutes, Ada said—
“May I call the children down to tell them?”
“Certainly,” the lawyer replied. “The affair is no secret.”
When Ada told the children that they were no longer poor, and that they need not live in the top attic-room in a boarding-house, they took the news more complacently than their sister had done.
“I’m glad we can go to a decent school,” Marjory said, little knowing how her words hurt Ada, who had worked her fingers to the bone to pay for her middle-class schooling.
“I wish we had been left a new poppa, instead of some money,” Sadie said regretfully. “If we’re rich again, you’ll drive about with mumma, I suppose, and we won’t have any fun. I like being poor.”
“And living in a hen-roost?” Ada asked laughingly.
Sadie had always called their low-roofed attic a hen-roost.
“Yes, ’cause I like sleeping with you better than with a cross nurse.”
The old lawyer got up. He had to take his spectacles off and rub them before he could see his way across the room.