Page:Live and Let Live.djvu/52

 love," she was kneeling by Jemmie, with her arms round his neck, and replying to his "Oh, Lucy! I was afraid you never, never would come," "I was afraid so too — and I find, Jemmie, I can't come home every Sunday."

"Then I shall grow old before I see you, Lucy; it seems a year since last Monday morning."

Lucy used her best rhetoric to make Jemmie acquiesce in her prolonged absence. It was but a forced submission to the inevitable.

"I know you would come if you could, Lucy, and that seems hardest of all."

"That's true!" exclaimed the father — "it is a shame to make you a slave to people's whims; but I told you how it would be beforehand."

"We can never, in any situation, my dear Lucy," said her mother, "be independent of others — but as you have only five minutes, tell us how you get on." Lucy was preresolved not to distress her mother with any complaints, and her answer was guarded and rather unsatisfactory. Poor Mrs. Lee guessed the meaning of this reserve; but, hoping for a favourable reply to one question, she said, "I am sure, Lucy, you find that Biddy a pleasant woman to live with?"

"Mother, that is the one thing I wanted to speak with you about, I know Biddy is good — she is so very kind to Judy Phealan, an orphan girl that comes there; she's good, too, to Jaboski; and to-day she was very obliging to me; but ever since I went there she has had something against me; she does not speak to me if she can help it; we sleep together, but she never even puts her hand over me. It is not natural for an Irish person, you know,