Lucy shook her head more vigorously. “I am not eligible as a chaperon,” she said. “I want my evenings for rest, and my Saturdays for my child and my house. And I am prejudiced against girls of the very type you say I might have found so ready to come to me. I certainly would not subject Hugh to the casual instructions of such errant misses. I desire his school education to proceed in orderly fashion. Therefore my household furnishes no occupation or interest for any who are without regular occupation or interests of their own outside of it. But you miss the true point of the position, Florence. The girls you speak of are all strangers to me. I know none such. But I do know Tom Black. Charlie also knew him and liked him. If I had known equally well some young woman-clerk or teacher also in Tom’s plight, I should have made the same suggestion to her which I made to him.” “Miss Latimer ought to have been ready to teach Hugh and look after him, considering she is staying with you,” observed Florence. “Miss Latimer has her own pupils,” Lucy answered. “She has as much work as her strength is equal for. And she is not my guest, Florence, but my boarder. She pays her own expenses, and I am much indebted to her for giving me the comfort of her society.” “What can she afford to pay?” Florence asked contemptuously. “One comfort is that it sounds well to say you have your old governess living with you. Nobody will think she pays anything.” Lucy was severely silent. “And to open your house only to lower it, to get in people earning wages or salaries, or whatever they please to call them!” groaned Florence. “If you chose to do such a thing, you might have acted so differently! It might not have been a bad idea if you had worked it out wisely. I’ve known reduced ladies who have really kept their establishments going in this way, taking care never to receive anybody but those who could pay really well. There are always wealthy families ready to pay handsomely to secure a happy home for some member who was born with a want or whose mind has failed. Jem has some friends who pay three hundred pounds a year for the care of their sister, quite a gentlewoman and cultivated, but just a little ‘touched.’ I believe he could have secured her for you if we had dreamed of such a thing. But of course you’d have had to keep a second servant and a first-rate table. Still, if you’d managed well, I believe it might have paid you better than going to the Institute. And it would have kept you quite in touch with social life, instead of shutting you out of it, as your daily engagements do.”