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My mother and I had been sitting beside the cross in the shadow of the cave, and she went in to finish a letter, leaving me there. Then you two came out talking. Before I knew what was happening you had said too much. I felt that if I had been in Lady Fan's place I would far rather never know that a stranger was listening. So I sat still, and I could not help hearing.
"We 'll show you the sunny side of poverty and work, and that is a useful lesson for any one, Miss Mills says," answered Polly, hoping that Fan would learn how much the poor can teach the rich, and what helpful friends girls may be to one another. ON the evening of Fan's visit, Polly sat down before her fire with a resolute and thoughtful aspect.
Nearly the whole of Fan's remaining time before going to Kingston was passed at Dawson Place. Her happiness was perfect, like the sunshine she had found resting on that dear spot on her return to it, pure, without stain of cloud.
She thought awhile, brushing the rose velvet of her mouth with the fan's edge, then, looking up confidently: "Mr. Siward is such a boy. I'm so glad he has you to advise him in such matters." "What matters?" asked Plank bluntly. "Why, in in financial matters." "But I don't advise him." "Why not?" "Because he hasn't asked me to, Miss Landis."
"I am very sorry, Mrs. Churton, but I cannot show you the letter." They both looked at her, Constance becoming more and more convinced that there was a strength in Fan's character which she had never suspected; while in Mrs. Churton anxiety and sorrow for a moment gave place to a different feeling. "You surprise me very much, Fan," she returned.
He has one boy about four, and has lost three or four others; and now this little one, about three weeks old, seems to be dying. I was almost glad that the first time I baptized a native child, using the native language, should be on Fan's birthday. It was striking to see the unaffected sympathy of the natives here. The poor mother came with the child in her arms to the large room.
Polly felt a change in the atmosphere, but merely thought Tom was tired, so she graciously dismissed him with a stick of cinnamon, as she had nothing else just then to lay upon the shrine. "Fan's got the books and maps you wanted. Go and rest now. I 'm much obliged; here 's your wages, Bridget."
At two o'clock the ladies would lunch, after which Fan would be alone until the five o'clock tea, when her hostess would reappear in a gay dress, and a lovely carmine bloom on her cheeks the result of her refreshing noonday slumbers. After tea they would spend an hour together in the garden talking and reading. Mrs. Travers, having bad eyesight, accepted Fan's offer to read to her.
Fan's grandson had been carried off in earliest prime by a chicken-bone that had pierced his vitals, and Cyril did indeed persuade his father to buy a bull-terrier. The animal was a superlative of forbidding ugliness, but father and son vied with each other in stern critical praise of his surpassing beauty, and Constance, from good nature, joined in the pretence.
At length one morning, just after receiving a letter from London, and when only one week of Fan's time at Wood End House remained, she spoke to her daughter, calling her into her own room. "Constance," she said, speaking in a constrained tone and with studied words, "I fully deserved your reproach the other day. I should not have let you go from home without a shilling in your purse.
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