Page:The Small House at Allington Vol 2.djvu/323

Rh is Miss Spruce's. She's agoing now, this minute. You'll find 'em all upstairs in the drawen-room." So upstairs into the drawing-room he went, and there he found the mother and daughter, and with them Miss Spruce, tightly packed up in her bonnet and shawl. "Don't, mother," Amelia was saying; "what's the good of going on in that way? If she chooses to go, let her go."

"But she's been with me now so many years," said Mrs. Roper, sobbing; "and I've always done everything for her! Haven't I, now, Sally Spruce?" It struck Eames immediately that, though he had been an inmate in the house for two years, he had never before heard that maiden lady's Christian name. Miss Spruce was the first to see Eames as he entered the room. It is probable that Mrs. Roper's pathos might have produced some answering pathos on her part had she remained unobserved, but the sight of a young man brought her back to her usual state of quiescence. "I am only an old woman," said she; "and here's Mr. Eames come back again."

"How d'ye do, Mrs. Roper? how d'ye do,Amelia? how d'ye do, Miss Spruce?" and he shook hands with them all.

"Oh, laws," said Mrs. Roper, "you have given me such a start!"

"Dear me, Mr. Eames; only think of your coming back in that way," said Amelia.

"Well, what way should I come back? You didn't hear me knock at the door, that's all. So Miss Spruce is really going to leave you?"

"Isn't it dreadful, Mr. Eames? Nineteen years we've been together;—taking both houses together, Miss Spruce, we have, indeed." Miss Spruce, at this point, struggled very hard to convince John Eames that the period in question had in truth extended over only eighteen years, but Mrs. Roper was authoritative, and would not permit it. "It's nineteen years if it's a day. No one ought to know dates if I don't, and there isn't one in the world understands her ways unless it's me. Haven't I been up to your bedroom every night, and with my own hand given you" But she stopped herself, and was too good a woman to declare before a young man what had been the nature of her nightly ministrations to her guest.

"I don't think you'll be so comfortable anywhere else, Miss Spruce," said Eames.

"Comfortable! of course she won't," said Amelia. "But if I was mother I wouldn't have any more words about it."

"It isn't the money I'm thinking of, but the feeling of it," said