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"Debbie!" implored Mrs Goldsworthy, under her breath.
"Hush-sh!" hissed her husband.
"You be quiet, Molly," Deb playfully adjured her. "This has nothing to
do with you, or with anybody except Bob and me. You come and spend your
next vacation with me at Redford, Bob, and then we can talk it all over
together."
She nodded to him meaningly. He smiled with perfect comprehension.
"How can we thank you," Mr Goldsworthy murmured emotionally, for he
also understood. "It is too, too--"
"It's all right, pater," the remarkable boy silenced him. "Aunt Deborah
knows how we feel about it."
Mary sat in stolid silence, for once indifferent to her
husband's dumb command; then tears welled into her tired eyes. She
pocketed her pride for her child's sake. It had been her hopeless
longing for years to give her darling's splendid abilities full scope.
"He will repay you, Debbie," she said.
"Ah, don't be so grudging--so ungenerous!" cried Deb.
Tea and cakes were brought in, and Bob, as he was thenceforth to be
styled, waited upon his aunt in the correctest manner. He had by this
time taken on an air that seemed to say: "You and I understand the
ropes; you must excuse these poor parents of mine, who were not born
with our perceptions." And Deb, no more proof against this sort of
thing than meaner mortals, had a feeling of special proprietorship in
him which she found pleasant, although he was not exactly the
heir-on-probation that she could have wished; which, of course, it
would have been preposterous to expect in a son of Bennet
Goldsworthy's. Bennet Goldsworthy accompanied her to the gate when she
went away, forbidding Mary to expose herself, hatless, to the wind. And
there the benevolent aunt's "intentions" were more distinctly
formulated.
"I wish to take entire charge of his education, if you will allow me.
He is a very promising boy, and should have all his chances. Let me
send him to the Melbourne Grammar after Christmas, and as a boarder, if
you don't mind. There are such advantages, both in position and for
study, in living at the school."
"I leave everything--everything, in your hands," murmured the
grateful father.
"By the way"--as an after-thought--"what about your little girl?"
She was not a little girl now, and had finished with school; but, oh,
the boon that a few good lessons in music and languages would be to
her!
That matter was settled.
"Well, now," said Deb, "we must think about Mary. She is frightfully
thin. I can see that she has had too many worries, as you say. She must
be taken out of them. I want to have her at Redford with me--as soon
as she can get ready--and give her a good long rest, and feed her up,
and make her fat and strong."
"I only wish you could prevail on her," he sighed. "But I am afraid you
will not get her to go anywhere without me. I have a devoted wife, Miss
Pennycuick"--even if she had not tacitly forbidden "Deborah" in her
poor days, he would not have ventured upon the liberty now that she was
rich--"too devoted, if that can be. She insists upon sharing all my
burdens, though I fain would spare her. I know well that, say what I
will, she will never consent to leaving me to struggle with them
alone."
"You have not told me what they are," said Deb, who saw that he was in
dread of her going before he could do so.
"Oh, debts--debts--debts!" he answered, with a reckless air. "The
millstone that we hung about our necks when we anticipated that she
would have money, and lived accordingly, and were then left stranded.
The eternal trying to make a shilling go as far as a pound--to make
bricks without straw, like the captive Israelites of old. But
why do you ask me? I hate to talk about it." He made a gesture of
putting the miserable subject aside.
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Cambridge, Ada, 1844-1926 - Sisters