89

CHAPTER VI.

THE TOWER OF DEFENCE.

I HAD now for many a long year been wandering without a guide. My parents had left off giving me any counsel, for they thought a grown woman like me should know how to manage her own affairs. Miss Rosa loved me, but she had never then troubled her young head about business-matters, and had no advice to give. I was walking on dark mountains, and my feet were always stumbling. The mistakes into which I fell were such as many a younger person may be apt to make; and the tale of my later life is not without its lessons.

I have been telling how and where I earned money during the first years I was a widow. I must now say how I spent it. My wages had varied. Sometimes I had twenty pounds a year; sometimes, thirty. Where the wages were low, I had more perquisites, so that I may say I had on the whole as good as five or six-and-twenty, beside handsome presents, and one or two small legacies. The young lady with whom I went to Hastings begged her mother to give me a five-pound note; and

this I kept by me, till the time I had to part with Jack, when I spent it in rigging him out with what I thought he would most need. As for Mrs. Bartlett, she left it in her will that I should have five pounds a year as long as I lived; so I had this to look forward to in the future.

It may appear strange, that out of some sixand-twenty pounds a year, I had managed to lay by even less each quarter than I had done at Chelsea, where I went for only ten pounds. But it often happens that as the incomings are larger, so also are the outgoings. The Bible says, "He that loveth silver shall not be satisfied with silver;" and it gives as one reason of this, "when goods increase, they are increased that eat them." During these years, I had had two to provide for. And I felt bound to provide well. Being so much in the lady's room, I had always to be better dressed than if I had been in any other kind of service; and though I did not deck myself out smartly, yet I had to get new things oftener. In that matter, I cannot say I think I did more than was right. For myself I always preferred what was quiet to what was gay. If I was at all a spendthrift, it was about my boy. As I liked to see him look plump and rosy, I did not grudge four shillings a week for his board. So far, again, was right enough. Then as for his schooling, I paid threepence a week at first; fourpence, when he got to learn writing; and

sixpence a week, when he got into all the classes. I do not regret a farthing of that, either. But I own I was too fond of seeing him well-dressed. People should no more clothe their children, than they should clothe themselves, beyond their station. There is a fitness in all things. If I had only cared to see my child clean and tidy, it would have been all well; but, like a foolish mother, I fancied that nothing could be too good or too fine when I was buying stuff or cloth to make him a frock or an over-coat. I am not sorry for his sake that's dead and gone, nor yet for my own; but it does sometimes come across my mind, that if I had taken a little more forethought in those years, I might have been less burdensome to my kind friends, and have left room here for some other old woman who never had the same fair chances that were put in my way.

All those years, too, I was silly enough not to put my money into any bank. I was so afraid that if I did, the bank would break, or something happen, before I drew it out again. So I hoarded it up, and kept it under my own care, thinking that thieves, if they came to the house, would never trouble themselves about the little sum I was likely to have, when there was plate, and so on, to be found in the butler's pantry. Happily they never came, or I might have had a sore teaching about " treasures which "thieves break

66

through to steal." My little money-bag was safe enough; but, no doubt, I should have been far wiser, if I had got a profit on it upon good security," as people say. The Bible does not forbid our putting out money to the "exchangers," or, as Luke says, "into the bank."

It was not above two pounds that I then made it a rule to add year by year to my savings. If I put by more one year, I was sure to put by less the next. So, at the end of the thirteen years I have been speaking of, I had not more than twenty-five pounds laid by. As I could not take this sum with me on the journey; and as Mr. Bartlett was willing to put my five pounds legacy, whenever I liked, into the Bank of England, along with other moneys which he managed for Miss Rosa, I got him to put in my five-and-twenty pounds before we started. He set down my account regularly in a book signed with his own name, telling me to take care of it, and to bring it him every year, that I might receive my "dividends," and say whether I would have that year's five pounds paid out to me, or added to what was in the bank. I felt I could trust him, for I knew Miss Rosa would see to it that I was never wronged.

As long as we were on our tour, I needed but little, and got that little very cheap. When I came home, it was with my mind fully made up that I would turn over a new

my

leaf, while as yet I had the power to earn my own bread. I believe when I had laid out money so lavishly on Jack, I had dreamed a fond dream of the care he would take of me in return, when I grew to be past service, and he in the prime of life. I had forgotten how likely he would be to have a wife and children to keep, and that it would be wrong for me to hang as a burden on his hands, however willing he might be to do a son's part. But now that he was gone to sea, began to waken up more to the realities of life. I began to look forward into this world's future with keener powers of sight. I felt that if sailor-boy did bring home his earnings, and give me a share, it would be at odd times, and long between. What was I to live on in the meanwhile, if so be I was no longer able to work? I knew that "the prudent foreseeth the evil and hideth himself, while the simple pass on and are punished." I saw black clouds ahead,-old age and sickness-poverty and want-perhaps starvation or the workhouse. It was needful to seek shelter while I had the power. I had little enough time before Six-and-forty as I nearly was, I could only reckon at the most on some ten or twelve years of life, in which to be doing. There was much to be done in a short space.

me.

of

66

Money! money!" now became the motto my life. And as in former days, so now again, I made my Bible-readings to fall in