"It does not matter so much who ought to do it," said Cicely, with composure. "Some one _must_ do it, and I don't know who will but me. Then I think there ought to be an advertisement written for the _Guardian_."
"Cicely, you said you were to stay with papa!"
"It is not for me; it is for papa himself. Poor papa! Oh, what a shame, what a shame, at his age! And a young man, _that_ young man, with nothing to recommend him, coming in to everything, and turning us out! I can't talk about it," cried Cicely. "The best thing for us is to go and do something. I can make up the advertisement on the way."
And in the heat of this, she put on her hat and went out, leaving Mab half stupefied by the suddenness of all those settlements. Mab had not the courage to offer to go to Wilkins and the rest with her sister. She cried over all that Cicely had to do; but she knew very well that she had not the strength to do it. She went and arranged her easel, and set to work very diligently. That was always something; and to make money, would not that be best of all, as well as the pleasantest? Mab did not care for tiring herself, nor did she think of her own enjoyment. That she should be the brother working for both, and Cicely the sister keeping her house, had always been the girl's ideal, which was far from a selfish one. But she could not do what Cicely was doing. She could not steer the poor little ship of the family fortunes or misfortunes through this dangerous passage. Though she was, she hoped, to take the man's part of breadwinner, for the moment she shrank into that woman's part which women too often are not permitted to hold. To keep quiet at home, wondering and working in obscurity--wondering how the brave adventurer was faring who had to fight for bare life outside in the world.
I dare not follow Cicely through her morning's work; it would take up so much time; and it would not be pleasant for us any more than it was for her. "Don't you make yourself unhappy, Miss," said the butcher, "I know as you mean well by every one. A few pounds ain't much to me, the Lord be praised! and I'll wait, and welcome, for I know as you mean well." Cicely, poor child! being only nineteen, cried when these kind words were said to her, and was taken into the hot and greasy parlour, where the butcher's wife was sitting, and petted and comforted. "Bless you, things will turn out a deal better than you think," Mrs. Butcher said; "they always does. Wait till we see the handsome young gentleman as is coming through the woods for you, Miss Cicely dear: and a good wife he'll have, like your dear mother," this kind woman added, smiling, yet wiping her eyes. But Wilkins the grocer was much more difficult to manage, and to him Cicely set her fair young face like a flint, biting her lips to keep them steady, and keeping all vestige of tears from her eyes. "Whatever you do," she said with those firm pale lips, "we cannot pay you now; but you shall be paid if you will have patience;" and at last, notwithstanding the insults which wrung Cicely's heart, this savage, too, was overcome. She went home all throbbing and aching from this last conflict, her heart full of bitterness and those sharp stings of poverty which are so hard to bear. It was not her fault; no extravagance of hers had swelled those bills; and how many people threw away every day much more than would have saved all that torture of heart and mind to this helpless and guiltless girl! Mildmay himself had paid for a Palissy dish, hideous with crawling reptiles, a great deal more than would have satisfied Wilkins and relieved poor Cicely's delicate shoulders of this humiliating burden; but what of that? The young man whom she saw in the distance approaching the rectory from the other side could at that moment have paid every one of those terrible debts that were crushing Cicely, and never felt it; but I repeat, what of that? Under no pretence could he have done it; nothing in the world would have induced the proud, delicate girl to betray the pangs which cut her soul. Thus the poor and the rich walk together shoulder by shoulder every day as if they were equal, and one has to go on in hopeless labour like Sisyphus, heaving up the burden which the other could toss into space with the lifting of a finger. So it is, and so it must be, I suppose, till time and civilization come to an end.