Page:The Confessions of a Well-Meaning Woman.djvu/32

 that fellow, if you’d licked him a bit more when he was younger. . .” This from Spenworth! “Who,” I asked, “who made thee a ruler and a judge?” And then, truly honestly, I had to beg him to leave me in order that I might compose myself. . . Compose myself!

To shew you how unnerved I had become, I wrote down something which I had never breathed to Arthur or Will. We have always been so poor that I had dreaded an emergency, a sudden illness, for which I should be unable to provide. In Mount Street we are positive Spartans! Well, from the day of Will’s birth I have pinched and scraped, scraped and pinched, trying to put something by. . . A little nest-egg. . . Thirty years—nearly. I have never dared invest it, in case something happened. It lies at the bank—in a separate account—ready at a moment’s notice. When I was so ill four years ago, did I touch it? But before my operation—in case anything happened—I told Will the amount and how I had arranged for him to be able to draw on it. What I tell you is told to the grave; I have torn up the letter; they still do not know; but, when I saw the amount, I was truly