'My father has never been unkind to me, but I have had no home with him. When my mother brought me home from India--she died very soon after we got home, you know'--Ida strangled a sob at this point--'I was placed with strangers, two elderly maiden ladies, who reared me very well, no doubt, in their stiff business-like way, and who really gave me a very good education. That went on for nine years,--a long time to spend with two old maids in a dull little house at Turnham Green,--and then I had a letter from my father to say he had come home for good. He had sold his commission and meant to settle down in some quiet spot abroad. His first duty would be to make arrangements for placing me in a high-class school, where I could finish my education; and he told me, quite at the end of his letter, that he had married a very sweet young lady, who was ready to give me all a mother's affection, and who would be able to receive me in my holidays, when the expense of the journey to France and back was manageable.' 'Poor darling!' sighed Bessie. 'Did your heart warm to the sweet young lady?' 'No, Bess; I'm afraid it must be an unregenerate heart, for I took a furious dislike to her. Very unjust and unreasonable, wasn't it? Afterwards, when my father took me over to his cottage, near Dieppe, to spend my holidays, I found that my stepmother was a kind-hearted, pretty little thing, whom I might look down upon for her want of education, but whom I could not dislike. She was very kind to me; and she had a baby boy. I have told you about him, and how he and I fell in love with each other at first sight.' 'I am horribly jealous of that baby boy,' protested Bessie. 'How old is he now?' 'Nearly five. He was two years and a half old when I was at Les Fontaines, and that was before I went to Mauleverer Manor.' 'And you have been at Mauleverer Manor more than two years without once going home for the holidays,' said Bessie. 'That seems hard.' 'My dear, poverty is hard. It is all of a piece. It means deprivation, humiliation, degradation, the severance of friends. My father would have had me home if he could have afforded it; but he couldn't. He has only just enough to keep himself and his wife and boy. If you were to see the little box of a house they inhabit in that tiny French village, you would wonder that anybody bigger than a pigeon could live in so small a place. They have a narrow garden, and there is an orchard on the slope of a hill behind the cottage, and a long white road leading to nowhere in front. It is all very nice in the summer, when one can live half one's life out of doors, but I am sure I don't know how they manage to exist through the winter.' 'Poor things!' sighed Bessie, who had a large stock of compassion always on hand.