"I know that too. I must scheme and plot to deceive them, like the bad women in novels; only they do it to harm people, while I shall do it for their good. Go away, Harry, and let me think."
He went away, and was uncomfortable till lunch time, when she met him with a calm face and a telegram in her hand, which she asked him to despatch to the township for her.
"I have put him off till to-morrow," she said. "You can tell him the horses were lame, or something."
Mr. Oxenham, who had scores of buggy horses, all jumping out of their skins with the exhilaration of their spring coats and renewed constitutions, said she must think of something that Tony would be more likely to believe than that. And she said, "Oh, leave it to me!" And he replied that he would do so with the very greatest pleasure.
The luncheon bell rang, and Jenny came into the pleasant dining-room, with the children clinging to her. She put them in high chairs on either side of her place at the table, and tied on their bibs, and cut up their roast mutton and potato, like the little mother that her lover dreamed of.
"Why do you bother about those brats, Miss Liddon, while the nurse spends all her time flirting over the back fence?" their father said, in a gay but compunctious tone. And he helped her to mayonnaise, and to her special wine, and to cool soda-water, and to salt, and to anything he could lay his hands on; for he feared they were going to treat her badly, and he wanted to put in all the good treatment that he could beforehand.
His wife regarded the girl with infinite kindness, but no compunction whatever—for she was a woman, and not a man.
"Jenny, dear," she said, "do you think you would enjoy a little drive this afternoon? I don't think it is too hot."
"I should, greatly," Jenny replied, the ready glow in her face. "But I enjoy everything—whether out of doors or in—whatever you like best."
"Me, too," clamoured little Hal. "Let me go too, mother! Then I can tell Miss Liddon some more about Uncle Tony's ship that he's gone to Tasmania in."