"
"I wish her bed hadn't come down with her," said Gilbert. "We could
never have afforded to get that water into the house, or had the little
furnace, and I suppose, though no one of us ever thought of it, that you
would have had a hard time doing the work in the winter in a cold house,
and it would have been dreadful going to the pump."
"Dreadful for you too, Gilly," replied Kathleen pointedly.
"I shall be at school, where I can't help," said Gilbert.
Mrs. Carey made no remark, as she intended the fact that there was no
money for Gilbert's tuition at Eastover to sink gradually into his mind,
so that he might make the painful discovery himself. His fees had
fortunately been paid in advance up to the end of the summer term, so
the strain on their resources had not been felt up to now.
Nancy had disappeared from the room and now stood in the doorway.
"I wish to remark that, having said a good many disagreeable things
about Cousin Ann, and regretting them very much, I have placed the four
black and white marble ornaments on my bedroom mantelpiece, there to be
a perpetual reminder of my sins. You Dirty Boy is in a hundred pieces in
the barn chamber, but if Cousin Ann ever comes to visit us again, I'll
be the one to confess that Gilly and I were the cause of the accident."
"Now take your pencil, Nancy, and see where we are in point of income,
at the present moment," her mother suggested, with an approving smile.
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