eady to help you.
If only you had been a couple of years older! You're hardly sixteen and
so childish for your age. There, don't cry, Lesbia!" (more kindly). "We
shall manage something for you amongst us. Your relations certainly
won't turn you adrift. But, of course, it's difficult to arrange when we
have children of our own to educate. I expect your fees were paid at
school until Christmas, so you may just as well go back there until the
end of the term. I'll call on Miss Tatham and talk the matter over with
her. You were getting on so nicely at the High School, it seems a pity
for you to leave, doesn't it?"

"Yes; I should like to go back there," answered Lesbia forlornly.

CHAPTER VI

Lesbia's Future

Lesbia having, figuratively speaking, eaten Eve's apple and cast her
happy-go-lucky childhood behind her, found her newly acquired knowledge
exceedingly bitter fruit. Mrs. Patterson was not disposed to treat her
as the Hiltons had done, leaving her in complete ignorance of ways and
means. On the contrary she discussed the financial side of her prospects
to the last half-penny. She did it quite kindly, but with unsparing
plainness.

"You'll have to face the fact that later on you must earn your own
living, Lesbia," she said. "We must decide what's the best way to
educate you and train you, so as to make you fit for something."

Mrs. Patterson had, as she promised, written to Lesbia's various
relations, explaining the situation and asking for help. There were very
few of them, and they were only distantly related, so perhaps they did
not consider the ties of blood made a strong claim upon their
assistance. Two of them never answered at all. One wrote suggesting that
Lesbia should be sent out to Canada through an emigration society and
handed over to her stepbrother who ought to be responsible for her;
another (Mrs. Patterson looked frankly angry at this letter) enclosed
particulars of an orphanage to which she subscribed, and wondered if
Lesbia was too old for admission. Great aunt Mrs. Newton sent a letter
in a sloping, shaky hand with nearly every other word underlined.

"I shall be willing to give her a _home_," it ran, "as I do not forget
her _poor mother_ was _my niece_. I am at present without _any
servants_, and I can only get a _charwoman_ to come every _other_ day.
My companion, Miss Parry, is leaving me after _Christmas_, and so far I
have not heard of _another_. I will send Lesbia's railway far