Page:The Yellow Book - 01.djvu/194

176 it seemed a sin to remain indoors. I do hope the frost continues all the holidays.

Lucy.It is all very well for you, but it must be terribly trying for many people—the poor, for instance.

Agnes.Yes.[A pause.]Auntie, you don't know anything, do you, about how—how poor people live?

Lucy.Not so much as I ought to.

Agnes.I didn't mean very poor people, not working people. I meant a person poor like—like I am poor.

Lucy.[Smiling.]Don't you know how you live yourself?

Agnes. Of course I do, but I was thinking of—of a friend of mine, a governess like myself, who has just got engaged; and I—I was wondering on how much, or, rather, how little, they could live. But you don't know of course. You are rich, and

Lucy.But I wasn't always rich. Thirty years ago when I was your age

Agnes.When you were my age! I like that! why you are not fifty.

Lucy.Little flatterer. Fifty-two last birthday.

Agnes.Fifty-two! Well, you don't look it, at all events.

Lucy.Gross flatterer. When I was your age I was poor and a governess as you are.

Agnes.But I thought that your Aunt Emily left you all her money.

Lucy.So she did, or nearly all; but that was afterwards. It isn't quite thirty years yet since she came back from India, a widow, just after she had lost her husband and only child. I was very ill at the time—I almost died; and she, good woman as she was, came and nursed me.

Agnes.Of course, I know. I have heard father talk about it. And then she was taken ill, wasn't she?

Rh