“I don’t mind, among friends, stating that I—­no!  I’m not poor exactly, but I don’t think I’m what you may call rich; I wish I were, for dear Miss Matty’s sake—­but, if you please, I’ll write down in a sealed paper what I can give.  I only wish it was more; my dear Mary, I do indeed.”

Now I saw why paper, pens, and ink were provided.  Every lady wrote down the sum she could give annually, signed the paper, and sealed it mysteriously.  If their proposal was acceded to, my father was to be allowed to open the papers, under pledge of secrecy.  If not, they were to be returned to their writers.

When the ceremony had been gone through, I rose to depart; but each lady seemed to wish to have a private conference with me.  Miss Pole kept me in the drawing-room to explain why, in Mrs Jamieson’s absence, she had taken the lead in this “movement,” as she was pleased to call it, and also to inform me that she had heard from good sources that Mrs Jamieson was coming home directly in a state of high displeasure against her sister-in-law, who was forthwith to leave her house, and was, she believed, to return to Edinburgh that very afternoon.  Of course this piece of intelligence could not be communicated before Mrs Fitz-Adam, more especially as Miss Pole was inclined to think that Lady Glenmire’s engagement to Mr Hoggins could not possibly hold against the blaze of Mrs Jamieson’s displeasure.  A few hearty inquiries after Miss Matty’s health concluded my interview with Miss Pole.

On coming downstairs I found Mrs Forrester waiting for me at the entrance to the dining-parlour; she drew me in, and when the door was shut, she tried two or three times to begin on some subject, which was so unapproachable apparently, that I began to despair of our ever getting to a clear understanding.  At last out it came; the poor old lady trembling all the time as if it were a great crime which she was exposing to daylight, in telling me how very, very little she had to live upon; a confession which she was brought to make from a dread lest we should think that the small contribution named in her paper bore any proportion to her love and regard for Miss Matty.  And yet that sum which she so eagerly relinquished was, in truth, more than a twentieth part of what she had to live upon, and keep house, and a little serving-maid, all as became one born a Tyrrell.  And when the whole income does not nearly amount to a hundred pounds, to give up a twentieth of it will necessitate many careful economies, and many pieces of self-denial, small and insignificant in the world’s account, but bearing a different value in another account-book that I have heard of.  She did so wish she was rich, she said, and this wish she kept repeating, with no thought of herself in it, only with a longing, yearning desire to be able to heap up Miss Matty’s measure of comforts.