"He's not a gentleman," she said.—p. 401.
"Yes, my grandfather was dreadfully extravagant, and since father came into power the agricultural depression was the finishing stroke. It was cruelly hard to leave the dear old place, but the mortgagees foreclosed, and we all had to turn out. Dad and mother went to live in Cornwall, where she owns a tiny cottage. Harold passed as a doctor, Jack's at Johannesburg, and Ted's in Australia. Then Connie, my youngest sister, is companion to an old lady, and Esther and I share a cupboard of a flat with an old schoolfellow, Mabel Bryan, whose partner I am in a typewriting office. Esther, who's awfully clever, as well as handsome, and knows several languages, is corresponding clerk to a firm of shippers. She gets a hundred a year, and I manage to make about a pound a week; but I'm not clever, and have to do the best I can. We work awfully hard, but I really think we are happier than if we had nothing to do."
"I'm sure you are," sighed May, as her eye fell upon her own dearly purchased finery. "I must say, I think it very plucky of you to take it as you do."
Lulu opened her eyes, for she was not accustomed to pity. "I'm proud to be a working-woman, and even if I were rich like you, Mrs. Burnside, I couldn't bear to sit with my hands folded."
"Rich like me!" May echoed drearily. "I'm not rich; I owe everything I possess to my aunt."
"But she's rich, so it must be the same thing," persisted Lulu.
Just then Harold came hurrying in. "I was as quick as I could be, Mrs. Burnside," he began, manifestly pleased to find May still there. With an alarmed glance at the clock, she arose to go, and said cordially—
"I should be so pleased, Dr. Inglis, if you would bring your sister to see me on Tuesday afternoon."
"Many thanks, Mrs. Burnside, but I must return by the excursion train on Tuesday morning," returned Lulu; and May dared not urge the point. To invite the Inglises to any meal but afternoon tea was out of her power, for Miss Waller disapproved of promiscuous guests at luncheon and dinner. So, bidding a cordial farewell to Lulu, May set forth with Doris to Victoria Square, escorted by happy Harold.
"I call her a beautiful anomaly!" Lulu observed later on to her brother, when he asked what she thought of Mrs. Burnside. "At first, seeing how she was dressed, I concluded she was only a fashionable butterfly, caring for nothing but amusement. But from her talk I could see I had been unjust, and that there's nothing she would like better than being useful and independent. Poor thing! Her face is one of the saddest I ever saw."