CHAPTER 11
The Crosses, mother and daughter, lived at Walham Green. The house
was less pleasant than another which Mrs. Cross owned at Putney, but
it also represented a lower rental, and poverty obliged them to take
this into account. When the second house stood tenantless, as had
now been the case for half a year, Mrs. Cross' habitually querulous
comment on life rose to a note of acrimony very afflictive to her
daughter Bertha. The two bore as little resemblance to each other,
physical or mental, as mother and child well could. Bertha Cross was
a sensible, thoughtful girl, full of kindly feeling, and blest with
a humorous turn that enabled her to see the amusing rather than the
carking side of her pinched life. These virtues she had from her
father. Poor Cross, who supplemented a small income from office
routine by occasional comic journalism, and even wrote a farce
(which brought money to a theatrical manager), made on his deathbed
a characteristic joke. He had just signed his will, and was left
alone with his wife. "I'm sure I've, always wished to make your life
happy," piped the afflicted woman. "And I yours," he faintly
answered; adding, with a sad, kind smile, as he pointed to the
testamentary document, "Take the will for the deed."
The two sons had emigrated to British Columbia, and Bertha would not
have been sorry to join her brothers there, for domestic labour on a
farm, m peace and health, seemed to her considerably better than the
quasi-genteel life she painfully supported.
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