“For you!” She contemplated him with gravity: “To be sure I had not thought of you, not in that way.”
“O but please do think of me, dear lady, put me in your deepest regard.”
The ghost of a knowing grin brushed her features. Really a charming woman, in parts. A little stout, perhaps, and she had fat red hands, but her heart was a good substantial organ, it was in the right place, and her features seemed the best for wear.
“You are one of those surprising ladies”—he plunged gaily—“who’ve a long stocking somewhere, with trunks full of shares and scrip, stocks at the bank and mortgages at your solicitor’s. O yes, yes,” he cried out against her protestation, “and you will make a strange will leaving it all to me!”
She shook her head hopelessly, bending again over the bonnet whose desperate skeleton she had clothed with a flounce of crimson velvet. She was very quiet.
“Have I been rude?” he hazarded. “Forgive me.”
“Well, it’s not true,” she insisted.
“Forgive me—I have hurt you—of course it’s not true.”
Apparently she forgave him; he was soon asking if there were any rooms to let in the building. “Furnished, I mean.” He gave rein to his naïve strategy: “I have friends who want to come here and stay with me for a short holiday. I thought you might know of some.”
“In these flats?” She shook her head, but he persisted and played his artful card: