III
"Simply built for a chap to write in," Mr. Wriford said. "Just look how it gets the sun. It's stopped raining. I'd come here directly after breakfast. That's the time I can write. There's where I'd have my table. You'd see I was kept quiet."
"Oh, wouldn't I just," said Essie. "You see, there's a passage comes right down to this door, and my goodness if I saw any of the servants come past that corner there, or even go into the room overhead! My goodness, they'd know it if they did!"
He put his arm about her shoulders and laughed and pressed her to him; and Essie said: "Oh, just fancy if it really could be ours!"
He kept her there. She in his arm, they in surroundings such as these: he working, she ministering to him—ah, return to life! return to life!
"Well, we'll have a place as like it as we can find," he said.
She shook her head. With just a little sigh, "We never could," she said. "We'll be happier than anything wherever we are; but one thing, there couldn't be another darling place like this, and another, it would cost a fair fortune. Why, it's not even to let. It's only for sale."
He told her easily: "That's all right. That's just what we're going to do—buy a little place somewhere. I bet a thousand would buy this Whitehouse, buried away down here."
Essie made a tremendous mouthful of the word: "Well, a thousand!"
He laughed and squeezed her in reproof again. "Or two," he said. "Won't you ever understand what they pay for what you call the silly books?"