Vieve was cook and housekeeper, now that her mother was busy all day sewing, and she took pride in leaving everything in good order when she started for school. Not that the cooking was very hard work. They often said, laughingly, that Kit would give them both a good scolding if he should come home unexpectedly and see what they had for breakfast. A cup of coffee, a few slices of bread and butter, occasionally some eggs, or a handful of radishes from the garden, made their usual fare; and the other meals were equally light, though Mrs. Silburn insisted that every few days they should have a steak or some chops for health’s sake.
“It’s a sinful waste of money!” Vieve always declared. “We don’t need them half as much as we need the money. Remember you can’t bring a man home from New Zealand for nothing. Anyhow, it’s a shame for us to eat up the money that Kit works so hard for—and you sewing, sewing all the time. I’m going to find a way to earn a little money myself, as soon as I can. I don’t want to be the only one to make nothing.”
“Then who will take care of me?” Mrs. Silburn’s invariable answer was.
One morning she knew there was a letter by the way Vieve came running down the hill, even before it was waved in the air for her. And Vieve burst in flushed and breathless.
“I’m almost afraid to open it,” Mrs. Silburn said. “So much depends upon this letter, and it may crush all our hopes.”
“Not this letter!” Vieve laughed. “This is not from that consul man, this is from Kit; and his letters never crush anybody’s hopes.”
It was a letter telling of his safe arrival in Marseilles, and his night in Louis-Philippe’s cell in the Castle d’If, and his visit to Notre-Dame-de-la-Garde with Harry and their meeting with the distinguished stranger who proved to be a cardinal.
“A cardinal!” Vieve exclaimed; “just think of our Kit travelling about with a cardinal. He’ll be so proud when he gets home we won’t know what to say to him.”
“Indeed, I think any cardinal or anybody else ought to be proud to associate with a young man like Kit,” Mrs. Silburn hastened to answer. “I don’t know that I want him running about with cardinals, either. They’re papists, and the papists are all tricky. It would be just like them to try to make a Catholic of such a young man. That Louise Phillips, or whatever her name was, can consider herself very much honored, too, that Kit visited her cell.”
“Why, mother,” Vieve laughed, “Louis-Philippe was a man; a king, a prince, or something.”