with the fair
young girl sitting near the table and darning what would soon have been
a hole in the elbow of her father's coat. She had discovered it that
morning, and as soon as Neil left her sat down to her task, with her
pretty white apron partially covering her linen dress and greatly
improving her appearance. Bessie always wore aprons in the morning at
home, though Neil had more than once objected to it, as he said such
things belonged to housemaids and not to ladies.

"And I am the housemaid; I wash the dishes and lay the cloth and sweep
and dust, and an apron keeps my dress clean," Bessie had answered him,
laughingly, and when she came to London she brought her best apron with
her, and after Neil was gone put it on and commenced her task of
darning.

"Oh, if you could have a new coat; this is so worn and threadbare," she
said to her father, who was sitting near her in his dressing-gown. "I
wish Neil had sent you a coat instead of that dress to me. I do wish we
were rich! I would buy a lot of things, but first of all I would have a
drive in the park. Wasn't it grand! I wish Neil would take us, though
perhaps he has not the money of his own to pay for the carriage."

"Bessie," her father said, rousing up from the half dozing condition in
which he was most of the time when in the house, "you are hugging a
delusion with regard to Neil. He is very kind in a way, when it costs
him nothing, but he would never sacrifice his comfort or his feelings
for you or me. We are his poor relations, from the country; we are not
like his world, or that powdered piece of vanity who was with him
yesterday. It would cost him nothing to take us for a drive, for the
carriage is his mother's, but you couldn't hire him to go round that
park with us; he has that false pride, more common in women than in men,
which would keep him from it. He likes you very much--at Stoneleigh,
where there are none of his set to look on; but here in London it is
different. He might take us to many places, if he would; but he dares
not, lest he should be seen. He can send you a blue silk dress, which I
half wish you had returned; and he can come here and make your pulse
beat faster with his soft words and manner, which mean so little; but
other attentions we must not expect from him. I tell you this, my child,
because you are getting to be a woman. You were fifteen last March. You
are very beautiful, and Neil McPherson knows it, and if you had a
fortune he