‘O Miss Toller, forgive me! When I saw you sitting with that Poulter and that Goacher, the Devil got the better of me, but—’
‘Hush, my dear; I oughtn’t to have gone, and never any more from this day call me Miss Toller. Call me Mary, always from this day—you promise me?’ and Miss Toller kissed Helen’s quivering lips.
Miss Toller did all she could to get other boarders, but none came and she had a hard time. It was difficult for her sometimes to find a dinner for herself and Helen. Good Mrs. Mudge was delicately considerate and often said, ‘that meat need not come up again,’ and purposely ordered more than she and Miss Everard could eat, but the butcher’s bill and the milk bill were not paid so regularly as heretofore. Worse than privation, worse than debt, was the vain watching for inquiries and answers to her advertisement. What would become of her? Where could she go? Three more boarders she must have or she could not live, and there was no prospect of one. If by great good luck she could obtain three, they might not stay and the dismal struggle would begin again. Lodging-house keepers are not the heroines of novels and poems, but if endurance, wrestling with adversity, hoping in despair, be virtues, the eternal scales will drop in favour of many underground basements against battlefields. At last, after one or two pressing notices from landlord and rate-collector, Mrs. Mudge and Miss Everard were informed that Russell House was to be given up. She and Helen must seek situations as servants.
Mrs. Mudge and Miss Everard went away at the end of the month. On the dining-room table after they had gone Miss Toller found two envelopes directed to her. Inside were some receipts. Mrs. Mudge had paid all the rent due to the end of Miss Toller’s term, and Miss Everard the taxes. Next week Miss Toller had the following letter from her father:—
‘MY DEAR MARY,—This is to tell you that your stepmother departed this life last Tuesday fortnight. She was taken with a fit on the Sunday. On Tuesday morning she came to herself and wished us to send for the parson. He was here in an hour and she made her peace with God. I did not ask you to the funeral as you had been so long away. My dear Mary, I cannot live alone at my age. I was sixty-five last Michaelmas, and I want you back in the old house. Let bygones be bygones. I shall always be, your affectionate father,