"I've been so fortunate about that," her voice was quite cheerful again. "There's a seamstress from my old home--Miss Polly Hatch--who has known me all my life, and she is coming to sleep in a little bed in my room until we can afford to rent an extra bedroom. As long as she has to work at home anyhow, she can very easily look after the children while I am away. They are good children, and as soon as they are big enough I'll have to send them to school--to the public school, I'm afraid." This, because of Fanny's violent opposition, was a delicate point with her. She felt that she should like to start the children at a private school, but it was clearly impossible. "The boy won't be big enough for a year or two, will he?" He was interested, she saw, and this unaffected interest in her small affairs moved her almost to tears. "I wanted him to go to kindergarten, but, of course, I cannot afford it. He is only four and a half, and I'm teaching him myself in the evenings. Already he can read very well in the first reader," she finished proudly. For a minute the judge stared moodily down on her. His sagging cheeks took a pale purplish flush, and he bit his lower lip with his large yellow teeth, which reminded Gabriella of the tusks of a beast of prey. Then he laid his overcoat and his stick carefully down on a packing-case, and held out his hand. "I'm going now, and there's one thing I want to ask you--have you any money?" It was out at last, and she looked up composedly, smiling a little roguishly at his embarrassment. "I have six hundred dollars in bank for a rainy day, and I am making exactly fifteen dollars a week." "But you can't live on it. Nobody could live on it even without two children to bring up." She shook her head. "Oh, Judge Crowborough, how little you rich men really know! I've got to live on it until I can do better, and I hope that will be very soon. If I am worth anything now, in three months I ought to be worth certainly as much as twenty-five dollars a week. In a little while--as soon as I've caught on to the business--I'm going to ask for a larger salary, and I think I shall get it. Twenty-five dollars a week won't go very far, but you don't know how little some people can live on even in New York." "As soon as the six hundred dollars go you'll be headed straight for starvation," he protested, sincerely worried. "Perhaps, but I doubt it." "How much do you have to pay for your rooms?" "Twenty-five dollars a month. It isn't much of a place, you see, as far as appearances go. Fortunately, I have a little furniture of my own which Mrs. Fowler had given me." His embarrassment had passed away, and he was smiling now at the recollection of it.