"You must feel quite lost without her," continued the aunt, "though to be sure you didn't trouble her much with your company this last year. Poor Florrie, she used to fret about it a lot. And your father wasn't much use--such an undependable sort of a man as he is. Let's all hope, now he's got two motherless girls to look after, he'll be a bit more strict." "I wish you wouldn't keep on at me, Auntie," Jenny protested, "because I shall be most shocking rude to you in a minute, which I shouldn't like to be at such a time." "Tut--tut, I wish you could control that temper of yours; but there, I make allowances for I know you must be feeling it all very much, especially as you must blame yourself a bit." Jenny turned sharply round and faced her aunt. "What for?" she demanded. "Why, for everything. Nothing'll ever convince me it wasn't worry drove your poor mother into the grave. Your Uncle William said the same when he heard of it. He was _very_ disappointed to think he couldn't come to the funeral; but, as he said, 'what with, Easter almost on us and one thing and another, I really haven't got the time.'" Mrs. Purkiss had seated herself in the arm-chair and was creaking away in comfortable loquacity. "I think it's nothing more than wicked to talk like that," Jenny declared indignantly. "And, besides, it's silly, because the doctor said it was an abscess, nothing else." "Ah, well, doctors know best, I daresay; but we all have a right to our opinions." "And you think my leaving home for a year killed my mother?" "I don't go so far as that. What I said was you were a worry to her. You were a worry when you were born, for I was there. You were a worry when you would go on the stage against whatever I said. You were a worry when you dyed your hair and when you kept such disgraceful late hours and when you went gallivanting about with that young fellow. However, I don't want to be the one to rub in uncomfortable facts at such a time. What I came up to ask was if you wouldn't like to come and stay with us for a little while, you and May. You'll have to get an extra servant to look after the lodgers if your father intends keeping things on as they were, and you'll be more at home with us." Mrs. Purkiss spoke in accents almost ghoulish, with a premonitory relish of macabre conversations. "Stay with you?" repeated Jenny. "Stay with _you_? What, and hear nothing but what I ought to have done? No, thanks; May and I'll stay on here." "You wouldn't disturb your Uncle William," Mrs. Purkiss continued placidly, "if that's what you're thinking of. You'd be gone to the theater when he reads his paper of an evening." "If I went to stay anywhere," said Jenny emphatically, "I should go and stay with Uncle James at Galton. But I'm not, so please don't keep on, because I don't want to talk to _any_body."