It was odd that Gertrude should have chosen that hour to evince the only sign since her decision that she had any memory of me. When she came in, preceded by the knock and laconic announcement of Griselda, the first words she spoke were:
"Highly educative," I told her, as I ministered to her usual wants. "I have just learned the proper way of marrying a woman."
"Indeed?" murmured Gertrude, somewhat sourly, I thought, "and how is that?"
"It’s not the alderman that is important," I informed her. "It’s done with a hundred kisses and a pistol." In reply to her look of incomprehension, I described to her the episode of the dining room. To my surprise Gertrude could see no humor in that.
"What a child you are, Ranny," she shook her head sadly. "And I thought that with all your faults you were a serious person."
"That must have been your fundamental mistake about me," I answered somewhat sheepishly and yet nettled. "I fear I am not half as serious as the children are."
"No," said Gertrude. Then after a brief pause,
"Have you decided yet that the children ought to be sent away to schools?"
"Why, no, Gertrude! Such a thing has not entered my head since—since we talked of it," I told her.
"Ranny," she solemnly leaned forward, "I think I know what’s troubling you. You needn’t be so foolishly proud with me. It’s a question of money, I take it. Well, I’m ready to help out with their bills. I know these things are expensive. I am willing to set aside part of my income for their bills. We could arrange that part of it somehow. Why, you foolish boy, won’t you take me into your confidence?"
"It isn’t that—at all," I stammered. "Why won’t you understand—it’s the children themselves. How can I throw them over?"
"You don’t think you’re doing anything for them here—you and this foundling-asylum girl, who comes from goodness knows what parents? Better let me manage this—"
Curiously, I felt offended at her speaking thus of the girl Alicia who seems as integrally a part of my charge and household as any of the rest.
"It’s very good of you, Gertrude," I muttered, "to offer so much. But to take money from you for my sister’s children is—out of the question." This put her more than ever out of temper.