While he was filling his pipe, she went on with her sewing. He looked at her small, capable hands and deft fingers, her workmanlike kit, and the shining coils of her brown hair, a shade lighter than her eyes.
“We had a talk the other day, Joyce, but I never discovered till I was walking home that I had asked for your advice and never got it. I’m here to get it this morning.”
Unconsciously, thinking of the Parson’s injunctions, he laid stress upon this last sentence. It was plain to the girl that he had not come for anything else. He went on hurriedly.
“I owe my father five hundred pounds. This is strictly between ourselves. I got into debt to that tune, and he paid up like a trump. He never slated me at all. Mother doesn’t know. Now, I’ll say to you that I should have kept out of debt, if I had even suspected that he was really hard up. I swear that, Joyce.”
“And I’ll tell you something else. Generous and jolly as he’s been, I do feel sore and hurt because he couldn’t take me into his confidence. Once more, most strictly between ourselves,” she nodded, “there’s a big mortgage on the property, a plaster applied by my great-grandfather. Perhaps you knew it.”
“I thought everybody knew it. I’m sure our parlourmaid does.”
“Just so. Well, I didn’t know. I’ve been treated like a child.”
“But, Lionel, the old school are like that. They never tell their nearest and dearest what most intimately concerns them. Look at those Ocknell girls.” (The Ocknell estate marched with the Pomfret property.) “They were given every advantage except those which teach women to earn a living. They hunted, they wore pretty frocks, and had a gorgeous time, till their father died. The son has the property, heavily mortgaged, and the girls have seventy-five pounds a year apiece.”
“I should think so. If misery loves company, you are not alone.”
The sympathy in her voice moved him to further confidence.
“Now, what bothers me is: how can I repay my father? If I’d known what I know to-day, when I left Eton, horses wouldn’t have dragged me into the army, although soldiering suits me down to the ground. As a soldier I’m an encumbrance on my people. They have to stint, by Jupiter! to keep me in clover. I ought to be earning money, not spending it.”