Page:Robins - My Little Sister.djvu/41

Rh She loved it. " So would you."

"I should hate it!" I said with a passion of conviction.

She couldn't think why.

Neither could I—beyond the fact that my mother couldn't go with me. And that she had said of the Marley children, with that high air of pity— "They have the manners of girls who have not been brought up at home."

Dora asked if we didn't hate our governess. She was still more mystified to hear we had never had one.

Even then we did not associate that lack with poverty. Rather with the riches of our mother's personal accomplishments, and her devotion for her children. And indeed we may have been partly right. I think if she had been a millionaire she would not willingly have shared with a strange woman those hours she spent with us.

We read a great deal aloud. My mother and I took turns. Bettina used to sit over the embroidery she was so good at, and I so hopeless. Or she would sit under the wild broom in Caesar's Camp watching the birds; or lie curled up on the sofa stroking Abdul, the blue Persian. Indoors