"Oh, lovely," said Florence; "I adore crabs."
"We will go down to the fishwife after breakfast, and get her to boil some for us in time for supper," said the mother; "and now, Florence, if you are quite disposed to listen, I may as well get over this bad business."
"You allude to Aunt Susan, of course?" said Florence.
"Yes, my dear child, to her last letter. I could not read it to you, for really the tone is that aggravating it would make milk turn, and I know the contents by heart."
"What are they, mother? You may as well tell me; I am pretty well accustomed to bad news. Is she going to make your screw still smaller?"
"No, she says nothing about that. Florence, child, I wish it had been the will of Providence to have spared my brother, for if your Uncle Tom had lived I would not be in the sordid state I am now. If one of them had to go, why wasn"t it your Aunt Susan?"
"She is not my real aunt, you know," said Florence.
"That"s just it, dear, but she owns the money. Now, if she had left it to Tom he would have had me to live with him. I doubt, after his experience with your Aunt Susan, if he would ever have taken a second wife, and you and I would have had plenty."
"Dear me, mother," said Florence, frowning slightly, "what is the good of going over that now? Uncle Tom has been in his grave for the last six years, hasn"t he? and Aunt Susan rules the roost. It"s Aunt Susan we have got to think about. What did she say in that unpleasant letter?"
"Something about stocks and shares and dividends, dear--that her dividends are not coming in as well as usual, and that in consequence her income is not so large, and she finds it a great strain keeping you, Florry, at that expensive school."
"Oh, well, that"s all arranged," said Florence, in a somewhat nervous voice.
"My dear Florry, don"t you bear yourself up with false hopes and false ideas, for it seems, according to your Aunt Susan"s letter, that the thing is not arranged at all. In fact, she declares positively that she won"t keep you at Cherry Court School longer than another term."
"What, mother?"
"She says so, my love. I am sorry to have to tell you, but it is a fact. She says that you are going on sixteen, and that at sixteen you ought to be a very good pupil teacher at another school, where your services would be given in lieu of payment. She says she knows a school in the country where you would be taken, a place called Stoneley Hall, where there are sixty girls. It is up amongst the Yorkshire moors, in the dreariest spot, I make no doubt. Well, in her letter she said that she had arranged that you are to go to Stoneley Hall at Christmas, and that the next term is your last at Cherry Court School."
"If I win the Scholarship I need not do that," said Florence.
"No, no, dear, that"s just it; and she says also that when she removes you from Cherry Court School she will allow me fifteen pounds a year more than I have at present, which will make my income of sixty-five pounds instead of fifty. I mean to give you that fifteen pounds a year to buy your clothes with, Florry. You shall have that, my poor dear child, whatever happens. I think you can dress yourself quite neatly on that."
"I should judge from the sort of clothes I have now," said Florence, giving her foot a pettish kick against the obnoxious blue serge, "I should judge they did not cost five pounds a year. Yes, the fifteen pounds would be delicious; and you would give it to me, Mummy?"
"Well, of course, darling, because you would have no income of your own at Stoneley Hall for the first two years, and after that it depends altogether on what you can do. You are not half educated yet, are you Florence?"
"Of course not, mother; a girl of fifteen is not educated, as a rule."
"That"s just it, but your Aunt Susan does not care a bit. She reminds me in her horrid letter, that you are not her own niece at all, and that very few women would be as kind to her husband"s people as she is to you and me. She says frankly----"
"Oh, what an odious frank way she has!" interrupted Florence.
"She says frankly," pursued Mrs. Aylmer, wiping the moisture from her brow as she spoke, "that we are the greatest worry to her, both of us, and that she does not care a pin for either of us, but that she does not want to have it said that her husband"s people are in the workhouse, and that is why she is doing what she is doing."
"Oh, Mummy," said Florence, "can you bear her? When you tell me those sort of things I just long to throw her gifts in her face and to say boldly, "We won"t take another halfpenny from you, we will go to the workhouse to spite you, we"ll tell every one we can that we are connected with you. Yes, we"ll go to the workhouse to spite you.""
"That"s all very well, Florence," replied Mrs. Aylmer, rising as she spoke and shaking the crumbs from her dress outside the window. "I doubt if it would vex your Aunt Susan very much, and it would vex us a considerable deal, my love. Your Aunt Susan"s relations might not even hear of it, and we would be miserable and disgraced for ever. No, we must swallow our pride and take her money; there is no help for it.
But if you get the Scholarship, Flo, she is the kind of woman who would be proud of you, she is really. If she thought you had any gift she would turn round in jiffy and begin to spend money properly on you.
She asked me in her last letter what sort of girl you were growing up, and if you had a chance of being handsome, for, said she, "if Florence is really handsome, I might take a house in London and give her a season. I enjoy taking handsome girls about, and I am a right good matchmaker." That is what she said, the horrid old cat. But you are not handsome, Florry, not a bit."
"I know," replied Florence, "I know. Well, mother, we must make the best of things. You may be certain I won"t leave a stone unturned to get the Scholarship."
"You will get it, dear, and then your education will be secured, and by and by you will get a post as governess, a good post in some fashionable family, and perhaps you would meet a nice young man who would fall in love with you. They do over and over in the story-books--the nice young man, the heir to big properties, meets the governess girl and falls in love with her, and then she gets a much higher position than her employer"s daughters. That is what I would aim for if I were you, Florry."
"Oh, dear me, mother," said Florence. She stared very hard at the round face of her parent, and wondered down deep in her heart why she was so very fond of Mummy. "Let us go out and have a walk," she said, restlessly; "let us visit the little shrimp-woman; I"d like to see her and all the old haunts again."
"But before we go," said Mrs. Aylmer, "tell me, my darling, why are you nervous, why you fear you may not get the Scholarship."
"I told you last night, mother--can"t you understand? I am your one pet chicken, but I am not anything at all really in the eyes of the world. I am not beautiful and I am not specially clever."
"But you got amongst the lucky three, as you call them; you must be clever to have done that."
Florence stared very hard at her mother; her face went a little pale and then red.
"What is the matter, Flo? Why do you stare at me like that?"
"I am going to tell you something if you will never tell back again."
"What is it, dear? Really, Flo, you make me quite uncomfortable; you have got a very bold way of staring, love."
"I am going to tell you something," repeated Florence; "I got into the lucky three because I was mean. I did a mean, shabby, low thing, Mummy."
"Oh, no, no," said Mrs. Aylmer, restlessly, "no, no, darling."
"I did, mother," said Florence, and now her lips trembled. "I did something very mean, and I did it to the girl who gave me those lovely cherry ribbons."
"That spoilt chit--Kitty Sharston you call her?"
"Yes, that girl. I opened her desk and looked at an answer which she put to a certain question in English History which I did not know myself. If I had not answered that question I make no doubt I should not have been included in the lucky three."
"Well, well," said Mrs. Aylmer. She looked restless and disturbed.
She went again to the little window and looked out. "I don"t see how you can help yourself," she said.
"But it was a mean thing, wasn"t it, mother?"
"Poor people cannot help themselves," said the widow, in a restless voice, "but I wish you hadn"t told me, Florence; it was--it was the sort of thing that your poor father would not have done; but there, you couldn"t help yourself, of course."
"Then you don"t think, mother, that I ought to tell Mrs. Clavering?"
said Florence.
"Tell and give up your chance! No, no, no; that is the disadvantage of being so poor, one has to stoop sometimes. Your father would not have done it, but you could not help yourself. Come out, child, come out."
The mother and daughter wandered along the beach. They visited the shrimp-woman and then sat under the shade of a big rock and looked at the dancing waves, and talked of Florence"s chance of winning the coming Scholarship.
By tacit consent they neither of them alluded to that shabby deed which Florence had done; they were both in their hearts of hearts uncomfortable about it, but both equally resolved to carry the thing through now.
"For it is too important," thought Mrs. Aylmer.
And Florence also thought, "It is too important, it means too much; I must take every chance of securing the Scholarship."