Miriam Monfort | Page 9

was often obliged to check me.
"Poor child, why should you rejoice so?" she said, mournfully. "Don't you know you have lost your father from this hour? Do you suppose he will ever love you as well again--you or Evelyn? Poor, ignorant, sacrificed babes in the woods!"
"I don't care," I said. "I have got my new mamma to love me, even if he does not. 'Mamma--mamma Constance!' how pretty that sounds. Oh, that is what I shall always call her from this time--'Constance,' as usual, you know, with 'mamma' before it." And I kept repeating "mamma Constance," childishly.
"Foolish thing," she rejoined. "I wish you had your sister Evelyn's consideration; but at any rate," she murmured, "the money will be all yours. He cannot alienate that; yours by marriage contract, not even to divide with Evelyn, and" (elevating her voice) "that you will surely do hereafter, will you not, Miriam?"
"I don't know," I replied; "not unless she is good to me and stops calling me 'little Jew,' and other mean, disagreeable names. But I always thought Evelyn was the rich one until now. She has so many fine clothes, and such great relations, you say, in England."
"True, true, gentle blood is a fine heritage; but your mother had great store of gold, and, when your papa dies, all this will belong to you (it is time you should know this, Miriam), and you will have us all to take care of and support; so you must be very good, indeed."
"I am so sorry," I said, with a deep sigh and a feeling that a heavy burden had been thrown suddenly on my shoulders; "but I tell you what I will do" (brightening up), "I will give it every bit to mamma, and she will support us all. She will live much longer than papa, because she is so much younger--twenty years, I believe. Isn't that a great difference?"
"Your father will outlive me, child, I trust, should such a state of things ever come to pass; but I am old, and shall not cumber the earth long," and a groan burst from her lips.
"How old are you, Mrs. Austin?" I asked, with a feeling of awe creeping over me, as though I had been talking to the widow of Methuselah, and I looked up into her face, pityingly.
"Fifty-five years old, child, come next Michaelmas, and a miserable sinner still, in the eyes of my Lord! I was a widow when I went to hire with Mrs. Erle, Evelyn's lady mother--that was soon after she married the captain, who had only his sword--and I have lived with her and hers ever since, and served them faithfully, I trust, and I hope I do not deserve to be cast on strangers and upstarts in my old age, even if one of them happens to marry your father. Constance Glen, forsooth!" and she drew up her stiff figure.
"To be wicked and old must be so dreadful," I said, thoughtfully shaking my head and casting my eyes to heaven.
"What are you thinking about, child?" she asked, jerking my hand sharply. "Who is it that you call such hard names--'wicked and old' forsooth? Answer me directly!"
"It was what you said a while ago about yourself I was thinking of, Mrs. Austin," I replied. "To be more than half a hundred years old! It is so many years to live; and then to be such a sinner, too--how hard it must be! I always thought you were very good before; and I am sure you are not gray and wrinkled and blear-eyed, like Granny Simpson!"
"Granny Simpson, indeed! You must be crazy, Miriam Monfort! Why, she is eighty if she is an hour, and hobbles on a cane! I flatter myself I am not infirm yet; and, if you call a well-preserved, middle-aged, English woman, like me, old, your brains must be addled. Look at my hair, my teeth, my complexion"--pausing suddenly before me and confronting me fiercely. "See my step, my figure, and have more sense, if you are a little foreign Jewish child. As to sinfulness, we are all sinful beings, more or less. To be wicked is a very different thing from sinful. I never told you I was wicked, child. What put that into your head?"
"Oh, I thought they were the same thing. Which is the worst, Mrs. Austin?" I asked, with unfeigned simplicity.
"There, Miriam, step on before! you walk too fast anyhow for me to-day. Besides, your tongue wags too limberly by half. You always did ask queer questions, and will to your dying day. No help for it, I suppose, but patience; but it is all of that Gipsy blood! Now, Evelyn's line of people was altogether different. She has what they used to call in England 'blue blood in her veins;' do you