Part 29 (2/2)

'You will be quite a grand lady,' she said, with a touch of envy, when Ida had described the cosy red-brick cottage, the verandahed drawing-room and conservatory added by Miss Wendover, the pair of cobs which that lady drove, the large well-kept gardens; 'you will look down upon us with our poor ways, and this house, in which all the rooms smell of whitewash.'

'No, indeed, mamma, I shall always think of you with affection; for you have been very kind to me, although I know I have been a burden.'

'Everything is a burden when one is poor,' sighed her stepmother; 'even one extra in the was.h.i.+ng-bills makes a difference; and we shall feel it awfully when Vernon grows up. Boys are so extravagant; and one cannot talk to them as one can to girls.'

'But I hope you will be better off then, mamma.'

'My dear, you might as well hope we should be dukes and d.u.c.h.esses. What chance is there of any improvement? Your poor papa has no idea of earning money. I'm sure I have said to him, often and often, ”Reginald, do _something_. Write for the magazines! Surely you can do _that_? Other men in your position do it.” ”Yes,” he growled, ”and that's why the magazines are so stupid.” No, Ida, your father's circ.u.mstances will never improve; and when the time comes for giving Vernon a proper education we shall be paupers.'

'Poor papa!' sighed Ida; 'I am afraid he is not strong enough to make any great effort.'

'He has given way, my dear; that is the root of it all. We shall never be better off, unless those two healthy, broad-shouldered young men were to go and get themselves swallowed up by an earthquake; and that is rather too much for anyone to expect.'

'What young men?' asked Ida, absently.

'Your two cousins.'

'Oh, Sir Vernon and his brother. No, I don't suppose they will die to oblige us poor creatures.'

'They went up the what's-its-name Horn, in Switzerland,' said Mrs.

Palliser, plaintively. 'It made my blood run cold to hear them talk about it. ”By Jove, Peter, I thought it was all over with you,” said Sir Vernon, when he told us how foolhardy his brother had been. But you see they got to the bottom all safe and sound, though ever so many people have been killed on that very mountain.'

'I'm glad they did, mamma. We may want their money very badly, but we are not murderers, even in thought.'

'G.o.d forbid!' sighed the little woman. 'They are fine-grown, gentlemanly young men, too. Sir Vernon gave my Vernie a sovereign, and promised him a pony next year; but, good gracious! how could we afford to keep a pony, even if we had a stable? ”You had better make it the other kind of pony,”

says your father, and then they all burst out laughing.'

'So little makes a man laugh!' said Ida, somewhat contemptuously. That picture of her father making sport of his poverty irritated her. 'Well, dear mamma,' she said presently, moved by one of those generous impulses which were a part of her frank, unwise nature, 'if ever I can earn a hundred a year-and there are many governesses who get as much--you shall have fifty to help pay Vernon's schooling.'

'You are a dear generous 'arted girl,' exclaimed the stepmother, and the two women kissed again with tears, an operation which they usually performed in the hour of domestic trouble.

Miss Wendover's letter came next day, a hearty, frank, affectionate letter, offering a home that was really meant to be like home, and a salary of forty pounds a year, 'just to buy your gowns,' Miss Wendover said. 'I know it is not sufficient remuneration for such accomplishments as yours, but I want _you_ rather than your accomplishments and I am not rich enough to give as much as you are worth. But you will, at least, stave off the drudgery of a governess's life till you are older, and better able to cope with domineering mothers and insolent pupils.'

Such a salary was a long way off that hundred per annum which Ida had set before her eyes as the golden goal to be gained by laborious pianoforte athletics and patient struggles with the profundities of German grammar; but, as Captain Palliser paid, it was a beginning; and Ida was very glad so to begin. She wrote to Miss Wendover gratefully accepting her offer, and in a very humble spirit.

'I fear it is pity that prompts your kind offer,' she wrote, 'and that you take me because you know I left Mauleverer Manor in disgrace, and that n.o.body else would have me. I am a bad penny. That is what my father called me when I came home to him. And now I am to go back to Kingthorpe as a bad penny. But, please G.o.d, I will try to prove to you that I am not altogether worthless; and, whatever may happen, I shall love you and be grateful to you till the end of my life.

'As you are so kind as to say I may come as soon as I like, I shall be with you on the day after you receive this letter.'

Ida's preparations for departure were not elaborate. Her scanty wardrobe had been put in the neatest possible order. A few hours sufficed for packing trunk and bonnet-box. On the last afternoon Mrs. Palliser came to her highly elated, and proposed a walk to Dieppe, and a drive home in the diligence which left the Market Place at five o'clock.

'I am going to give you a new hat,' she said, triumphantly. 'You must have a new hat.'

'But, dear mamma, I know you can't afford it.'

'I _will_ afford it, Ida. You will have to go to church at Kingthorpe'--Mrs. Palliser regarded church-going as an oppressive condition of prosperous respectability. One of the few privileges of being hard up and quite out of society was that one need not go to church--'and I should like you to appear like a lady. You owe it to your pa and I. A hat you must 'ave. I can pay for it out of the housekeeping money, and your pa will never know the difference.'

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