“Of course you don’t, stupid. If you were on the top of a pile of swaying bales, old Podge would say, ‘Packett, take away the ladder: that nice young man must stay there. It’s better for him to die than marry Rachel—she’d drive him mad with bills in a month.’”
“Oh, that wouldn’t trouble me—I’d draw on him.”
“Oh, would you?” Rachel laughed sceptically. “You don’t know the Gov. if you think that. You couldn’t bluff him into paying a shilling. But I manage him all right. I can get what I want, from a trip to Sydney to a gold watch, dear boy.”
“Then why don’t you squeeze a honeymoon out of him?—that would be something new, Rachel.”
She actually paused in her haste.
“Wouldn’t it be splendid!” she exclaimed, putting her parasol well back behind her head, so that the glow of its crimson silk formed a telling background to her face. “Wouldn’t it be gorgeous? But as soon as I’m married he will say, ‘No, Rachel, my dear child, your poor old father is supplanted—your husband now has the sole privilege of satisfying your expensive tastes. Depend on him for everything you want.’ What a magnificent time I should have on your twelve notes a month!”
The spruce bank-clerk was subdued in a moment, in the twinkling of one of Rachel’s beautiful black eyes—his matrimonial intentions had been rudely reduced to a basis of pounds, shillings and pence.
But just at this embarrassing point of the conversation they turned into Tresco’s doorway, and confronted the rubicund goldsmith, whose beaming smile seemed to fill the whole shop.
“I saw an awf’ly jolly watch in your window,” said Rachel.
“Probably. Nothing more likely, Miss Varnhagen,” replied Benjamin. “Gold or silver?”