Now, however, it was paid, and he was glad,
and quite content with his uneventful life, even though, it was a life
of the closest economy and self-denial for himself and Bessie.
When Daisy had plenty she divided with the household at Stoneleigh, and
when she had little she kept it for herself, and Archie and Bessie
shifted for themselves--or rather the latter did, and was sometimes
almost as hungry as she had been when she ate the dry bread and
shriveled grapes on the fifth floor back of some large hotel.
Bessie understood perfectly her mother's mode of life, and knew that
though she was not degraded in the worst sense of the word, she was an
adventuress and a gambler, whom good, pure women shunned, and over whom
she mourned as a mother mourns for the child which has gone astray. And
yet Bessie's life was a comparatively happy one, for she had her father,
and she had Neil, her cousin, the handsome and spirited boy from Eton,
and later the dashing student from Oxford, who came sometimes to
Stoneleigh and made the place like heaven to the young girl blooming
there unseen and unknown to the great world outside, and Bessie hoped to
see him soon, for she was going with her father to London, where she had
never been since she was a child, and of which she did not remember
much.
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