"I know," said Liddell, with feeble eagerness, clutching the money and transferring it to his little old purse. "It is a good saving--a wise saying. I did not think you knew it; but--but why did you keep back any?"
"Because one always needs waste paper in a house, to light fires and cover things from dust. I shall collect more next time," she added, seeing the old man was pleased with the idea.
He made no reply, but sat gazing at the red coals, his lips moving slightly, and the purse still in his hand. Again he opened it, and took out the coins she had given him, holding them to the fire-light in the hollow of his thin hand.
"Do you know the value of money?" he said at length, looking piercingly at her. "Do you know the wonderful life it has--a life of its own?"
"If the want of can teach its value I ought to know," she returned.
"You are wrong! Poverty never teaches its worth. You never hold it and study it when, the moment you touch it, you have to exchange it for commodities. No! it is when you can spare some for a precious seed, and watch its growth, and see--see its power of self-multiplication if it is let alone--just let alone," he repeated, with a touch of pathos in his voice. "Now these few pence, thirteen and a half in all--a boy with an accumulative nature and youth, early youth, on his side, might build a fortune on these. Yes, he might, if he had not a grovelling love of food and comfort."
"Do you think he really could?" asked Kate, interested in spite of herself in the theories of the old miser.
"Would you care to know?" said her uncle, fixing his keen dark eyes upon her.
"I should indeed." Her voice proved she was in earnest.
"Then I will tell you, step by step, but not to-night. I am too weary. You are different from the others--your father and your brother. You are--yes, you are--more like _me_."
"God forbid!" was Katherine's mental ejaculation.
Mr. Liddell slowly put the thirteenpence half penny back in his purse, drew forth his bunch of keys, looked at them, and restored them to his pocket; then, resting his head wearily against the chair, he said, "Give me something to take and I will go to bed."
Katherine hastened to obey, and summoned the servant to assist him, as usual.