“Did you help?” he asked Peace.
“I wished father to do what he thought was right. He had been doubtful about the life there for a good while—whether it was really doing anything for humanity.”
She used the word with no sense of cant in it; Ray could perceive that.
“And do you ever wish you were back in the Family?”
Mrs. Denton called out joyously: “Why, there is no Family to be back in, I’m thankful to say! Didn’t you know that?”
“I forgot.” Ray smiled, as he pursued, “Well, if there was one to be back in, would you like to be there, Miss Hughes?”
“I can’t tell,” she answered, with a trouble in her voice. “When I’m not feeling very strong or well, I should. And when I see so many people struggling so hard here, and failing after all they do, I wish they could be where there was no failure, and no danger of it. In the Family we were safe, and we hadn’t any care.”
“We hadn’t any choice, either,” said her sister.
“What choice has a man who doesn’t know where the next day’s work is coming from?”
Ray looked round to find that Denton had entered behind them from the room where he had been, and was sitting beside the window apparently listening to their talk. There was something uncanny in the fact of his unknown presence, though neither of the sisters seemed to feel it.