Page:Robins - My Little Sister.djvu/59

Rh was bad. Therefore it was best covered up. "We shall manage," she said. I was sixteen when this thunder-bolt descended, and, by that time, I knew that "to manage" was just what my mother, at all events, was quite incapable of doing. We still kept three servants and no accounts. Lawyers' letters were put away. Out of sight, they seemed to be out of mind. Out of my mother's mind.

I thought constantly about these things.

One day, months later, I blurted out a hope that we should all die together. My mother was horrified.

"But if we don't," I said, "how are we going to live—Bettina and I, without the pension?"

"You will have husbands, I hope, to take care of you."

I went over the grounds for this "hope" with no great confidence.

My mother went alone into the garden.

She came in looking tired and white. Compunction seized me. I persuaded her to go and lie down. I would bring up her tea-tray. I expected to have to beg and urge. But she went