"Is it that you aren't well?" Jean asked. "I know it's a wretched business trying to go on working when one is seedy."
Miss Abbot shook her head. "It's far worse than that. I have to refuse work for I can't see to do it. I'm losing my sight and ...and there is nothing before me but the workhouse."
Over and over again in the silence of the night she had said those words to herself: she had seen them written in letters of fire on the walls of her little room: they had seemed seared into her brain, but she had never meant to tell a soul, not even the minister, and here she was telling this slip of a girl.
Jean gave a cry and caught her hands. "Oh no, no! Never that!"
"I've no relations," said Miss Abbot. She was quiet now and calm, and hopeless. "And if I had I couldn't be a burden on them. Nobody wants a penniless, half-blind woman. I've had to use up all my savings this winter ...it will just have to be the workhouse."
"But it shan't be," said Jean. "What's the use of me if I'm not to help? No. Don't stiffen and look at me like that. I'm not offering you charity. Perhaps you may have heard that I've been left a lot of money--in trust. It's your money as much as mine; if it's anybody's it's God's money. I felt I just couldn't pass your door this morning, and I spoke to you, though I was frightfully scared--you looked so stand-offish.... Now listen. All I've got to do is to send your name to my lawyer--he's in London, and he knows nothing about anybody in Priorsford, so you needn't worry about him--and he will arrange that you get a sufficient income all your life. No, it isn't charity. You've fought hard all your life for others, and it's high time you got a rest. Everyone should get a rest and a competency when they are sixty. (Not that you are nearly that, of course.) Some day that happy state of affairs will be. Now the kettle's almost boiling, and I'm going to make you a cup of tea. Where's the caddy?"
There was a spoonful of tea in the caddy, but in the cupboard there was only the heel of a loaf--no butter, no cheese, no jam.
"I'm at the end of my tether," Miss Abbot admitted. "And unless I touch the money laid away for my rent, I haven't a penny in the house."
"Then," said Jean, "it was high time I turned up." She heated the teapot and poked the bit of coal into a blaze. "Now here's your tea"--she reached for her bag that lay on the table--"and here's some money to go on with. Oh, please don't let's go over it all again. Do, my dear, be reasonable."