"How much is it, father?" she asked.
"Oh, five pounds will do," he said, vaguely. "There are one or two
other books."
She made a hasty calculation: five pounds was a large sum to her; but
she smiled as she said: "You are very extravagant, dear. There is already a copy of the
'Reliques' in the library."
He looked confused for a moment, then he said: "But not with these notes--not with these notes! They're valuable, and
the book is cheap."
"Very well, dear," she responded; and she went to the antique bureau
and, unlocking it, took a five-pound note from a cedar box.
He watched her covertly, with a painful eagerness.
"I suppose you have a large nest egg there, eh, Ida?" he remarked, with
a quavering laugh.
"No: a very little one," she responded. "'Not nearly enough to pay the
quarterly bills. But never mind, dear; there it is. You must show me
the books when they come; I never saw the last you ordered, you know!"
He took the note with an assumption of indifference but with a gleam of
satisfaction in his sunken eyes.
"Didn't you?" he said. "I must have forgotten. You're always so busy;
but I'll show you these, if you'll remind me. You must be careful of
the money, Ida; you must keep down the expenses. We're poor, very poor,
you know; and the cost of living and servants is very great--very
great."
He wandered off to the library, muttering to himself, with his book
under his arm, and the five-pound note gripped tightly in the hand
which he had thrust into the pocket of his dressing-gown; and Ida, as
she put on her habit and went into the stable-yard to have the colt
saddled, sighed as she thought that it would be nice to have just, for
once, enough money to meet all the bills and buy all the books her
father coveted.
But her melancholy was not of long duration. The colt was in high
spirits, and the task of impressing him with the fact that he had now
reached a responsible age and must behave like a horse, with something
else before him in life than kicking up his heels in the paddock, soon
drove the thought of their poverty from her mind and sent the blood
leaping warmly and wildly in her veins.
She spent the afternoon in breaking in the colt, and succeeded in
keeping Stafford Orme out of her thoughts; but he slid into them again
as she sat by the drawing-room fire after dinner--the nights are often
cool in the dales all through early summer--and recalled the
earnestness in his handsome face when he pleaded to be allowed to "help
her."