“I’m so used to thinking of ladies as if they were a different creation from us, and it seems rude to call you—Barbara!”

“Oh, but it makes me feel so good when you do!”

“Then I will call you Barbara. And I will answer any question you want to put to me.”

“And your mother, I imagine, is rather trying when you come home?” said Barbara, speaking from experience. “Mothers are—a good deal!”

“Well you see, miss—Barbara, my mother wasn’t used to a hard life like us, and Arthur—that’s my brother—and I have to do our best to keep her from feeling it. But we don’t succeed very well. Neither of us gets much for our day’s work. Poor mama likes to have things nice. And now that the money she used to have is gone—I don’t know how it went. She had it in some bank, and somebody speculated with it, I suppose—anyhow it’s gone, and the thing can’t be undone. Arthur grows thinner and thinner, and it’s no use. Oh, miss, I know I shall lose him!”

She wept a moment, very quietly but bitterly.

“I know he does his very best,” she resumed, “but mama doesn’t see it. She thinks he should be doing more for her, and I’m sure he’s dying!”

“Send him to me,” said Barbara. “I’ll make him well for you.”

“I wish I could, miss—I mean Barbara!”

“Does your mother do nothing to help?”

“She doesn’t know how. She hasn’t learned any trade like us. She was brought up a lady. I remember her saying once she ought to have been a real lady, a lady they say my lady to.”

“Indeed. How was it, then, that she is not?”

“I don’t know. There are things we don’t dare ask mama about. If she had been proud of them, she would have told us without asking.”

“What was your father, Alice?”

The girl hesitated.

“He was a baronet. But perhaps you would rather I said miss again.”

“Don’t be foolish, child!” Barbara returned.

“I suppose my mother meant that he promised to marry her, but never did. They say gentlemen think no harm of making such promises—without even meaning to keep them—I don’t know—I’ve got no time to think about such things, only—”

“Only you have to,” added Barbara. “Did he take your mother’s money and spend it?”

“Oh no, not that! He was a gentleman, you know, and they don’t do such things.”

“Don’t they!” said Barbara. “But what happened to the money? Is there any way of getting it back?”