She did not weep as she spoke. It was not on such occasions as this that the tears filled her eyes. But there was in her face a look of fixed and settled misery which convinced us that she at least did not doubt the truth of her own assertion. We muttered something as to our hope that she was mistaken. “The doctor, there, has written to tell mamma that it is so. Here is his letter.” The doctor’s letter was a good letter, written with more of assurance than doctors can generally allow themselves to express. “I fear that I am justified in telling you,” said the doctor, “that it can only be a question of weeks.” We got up and took her hand. There was not a word to be uttered. “I must go to him,” she said, after a pause. “Well;--yes. It will be better.” “But we have no money.” It must be explained now that offers of slight, very slight, pecuniary aid had been made by us both to Mary and to her mother on more than one occasion. These had been refused with adamantine firmness, but always with something of mirth, or at least of humour, attached to the refusal. The mother would simply refer to the daughter, and Mary would declare that they could manage to see the twelvemonth through and go back to Cornboro, without becoming absolute beggars. She would allude to their joint wardrobe, and would confess that there would not have been a pair of boots between them but for that twelve guineas; and indeed she seemed to have stretched that modest incoming so as to cover a legion of purchases. And of these things she was never ashamed to speak. We think there must have been at least two gray frocks, because the frock was always clean, and never absolutely shabby. Our girls at home declared that they had seen three. Of her frock, as it happened, she never spoke to us, but the new boots and the new gloves, “and ever so many things that I can’t tell you about, which we really couldn’t have gone without,” all came out of the twelve guineas. That she had taken, not only with delight, but with triumph. But pecuniary assistance from ourselves she had always refused. “It would be a gift,” she would say. “Have it as you like.” “But people don’t give other people money.” “Don’t they? That’s all you know about the world.” “Yes; to beggars. We hope we needn’t come to that.” It was thus that she always answered us, but always with something of laughter in her eye, as though their poverty was a joke. Now, when the demand upon her was for that which did not concern her personal comfort, which referred to a matter felt by her to be vitally important, she declared, without a minute’s hesitation, that she had not money for the journey. “Of course you can have money,” we said. “I suppose you will go at once?”