But their poverty had pinched them disagreeably--especially Bridget, in whom it had produced a kind of angry resentment. Their education had not been serious enough, in these days of competition, to enable them to make anything of teaching after their Father's death. Nelly's water-colour drawing, for instance, though it was a passion with her, was quite untrained, and its results unmarketable. Bridget had taken up one subject after another, and generally in a spirit of antagonism to her surroundings, who, according to her, were always 'interfering' with what she wanted to do,--with her serious and important occupations. But these occupations always ended by coming to nothing; so that, as Bridget was irritably aware, even Nelly had ceased to be as much in awe of them as she had once been. But the elder sister had more solid cause than this for dissatisfaction with the younger. Nelly had really behaved like a little fool! The one family asset of which a great deal might have been made--should have been made--was Nelly's prettiness. She was _very_ pretty--absurdly pretty--and had been a great deal run after in Manchester already. There had been actually two proposals from elderly men with money, who were unaware of the child's engagement, during the past three months; and though these particular suitors were perhaps unattractive, yet a little time and patience, and the right man would have come along, both acceptable in himself, and sufficiently supplied with money to make everything easy for everybody. But Nelly had just wilfully and stubbornly fallen in love with this young man--and wilfully and stubbornly married him. It was unlike her to be stubborn about anything. But in this there had been no moving her. And now there was nothing before either of them but the same shabbiness and penury as before. What if George had two hundred and fifty a year of his own, besides his pay?--a fact that Nelly was always triumphantly brandishing in her sister's eyes. No doubt it was more than most young subalterns had--much more. But what was two hundred and fifty a year? Nelly would want every penny of it for herself--and her child--or children. For of course there would be a child--Bridget Cookson fell into profound depths of thought, emerging from them, now as often before, with the sore realisation of how much Nelly might have done with her 'one talent,' both for herself and her sister, and had not done. The sun dropped lower; one side of the lake was now in shadow, and from the green shore beneath the woods and rocks, the reflections of tree and crag and grassy slope were dropping down and down, unearthly clear and far, to that inverted heaven in the 'steady bosom' of the water. A little breeze came wandering, bringing delicious scents of grass and moss, and in the lake the fish were rising.