"I hope you will not desert us, Mrs. Knapp," returned Katherine, cheerfully. "If you and I do our best, I hope the place will not be so bad."
"Well, it didn't ought to," returned Mrs. Knapp. "There's lots of good furniture everywhere but in the kitchen, and that's just for all the world like a marine store!"
"Is it?" exclaimed Katherine, greatly puzzled by the metaphor. "At all events you have made my room nice and tidy." This conversation, commenced on the staircase, was continued in Katherine's apartment.
"It ain't bad, miss; there's plenty of room for your clothes in that big wardrobe, and there's a chest of drawers; but Lord, 'm, they smell that musty, I've stood them open all last night and this morning, but they ain't much the better. I didn't like to ask for the key of the bookcase, but I can see through the glass the books are just coated with dust," said Mrs. Knapp.
"We must manage all that by-and-by," said Katherine. "Have you anything in the house? I suppose my uncle will want some dinner."
"I gave him a filleted sole with white sauce, and a custard pudding, at two o'clock, and he said he wanted nothing more. I had no end of trouble in getting half a crown out of him, and he had the change. If the gentleman as I saw with your mar, miss, hadn't given me five shillings, I don't know where I should be."
"I will ask my uncle what he would like for dinner or supper, and come to you in the kitchen afterward."
She soon found ample occupation. Not a day passed without a battle over pennies and half-pennies. Liddell gave her each morning a small sum wherewith to go to market; he expected her to return straight to him and account rigidly for every farthing she had laid out, to enter all in a book which he kept, and to give him the exact change. These early expeditions into the fresh air among the busy, friendly shopkeepers soon came to be the best bit of Katherine's day, and most useful in keeping up the healthy tone of her mind. Then came a spell of reading from the _Times_ and other papers. Every word connected with the funds and money matters generally, even such morsels of politics as effected the pulse of finance, was eagerly listened to; of other topics Mr. Liddell did not care to hear. A few letters to solicitor or stock-broker, some entries in a general account-book, and the forenoon was gone. Friends, interests, regard for life in any of its various aspects, all were nonexistent for Liddell. Money was his only thought, his sole aspiration--to accumulate, for no object. This miserliness had grown upon him since he had lost both wife and son. Fortunately for Katherine, his ideas of expenditure had been fixed by the comparatively liberal standard of his late cook. When, therefore, he found he had greater comfort at slightly less cost he was satisfied.