Mrs. Gilfin nodded. "For years and years, and so got into his misery habits."
"Ah," said I, recalling certain traits of the little old lady at Mootley, "so I should imagine. Miss Monk lived with her uncle also, it seems."
Mrs. Gilfin nodded again. "Mr. Miser Monk loved his niece: she was the only person he ever loved. Mr. Walter Monk was always away, as he is now, and being a widower, there was no one to look after the child. Mr. Miser Monk took Miss Gertrude to live with him, when she was quite a baby, and asked Miss Destiny to come to him also. Anne looked after the house, and the four lived together in that tumbledown old place like rats in a cheese. If Miss Gertrude hadn't gone for years to a boarding-school at Hampstead and got good food there, she never would have grown into the handsome young lady she is."
"Ah," I exclaimed, greatly interested, "then she is handsome?"
"As paint, Master Cyrus, and the sweetest young lady you ever met. Takes after her pa, she does, who is nice enough, though he's selfish I don't deny."
"Why," said Mrs. Gilfin, casting about in her mind for an explanation, "he's hardly ever at home, being always in London, on business he says, though I think he's too lazy to do much, especially," added Mrs. Gilfin with emphasis, "as he has five hundred a year sure. But he only comes down here once in a blue moon, as you might say, and leaves that poor young lady to live the life of a nun at The Lodge along with one servant to do all the housework."
"Why doesn't Miss Destiny continue to live with her niece?" I asked.
"Ah!" Mrs. Gilfin nodded vigorously, "she'd be glad to do so, as being a miser like the late Mr. Gabriel Monk, it would save her living expenses. But the fact is, Master Cyrus, that Miss Destiny don't like Miss Gertrude, and Miss Gertrude don't like Miss Destiny: nor does Mr. Walter Monk, for the matter of that. The five hundred a year being left to him is a sore point with Miss Destiny, so she cleared out when Mr. Miser Monk died, and now lives at the end of the village in a small cottage along with that half-mad creature, Lucinda Tyke, she picked up in the Rochford workhouse, and don't pay no wages to."
I was playing with the poker as Mrs. Gilfin spoke. "Then I take it that Mr. Walter Monk has five hundred a year, and no more?"