“Thinking of anybody in particular?” I put in.
“Never mind!” He laughed—almost one of his old hearty laughs. “Well, yes. Have you ever had any reason——? I mean, it’s funny you should ask that.”
“Something a certain friend of ours once let fall set me thinking.”
“Well, if that idea took shape, if Nina wanted it——”
Perhaps in the end she wouldn’t! I was thinking that possibly the course of events might cause Lady Dundrannan not to wish to see her cousin—and his establishment—at Cragsfoot.
“If she did—and he did,” Waldo went on, “well, I should be in a tight corner. Because, of course, he could outbid practically everybody, if he chose—and what reason for objecting could I give?”
“You seem to have something in your mind. You’re looking—for you—quite crafty! Out with it!”
“Well, supposing I’d promised that, if I sold, I’d give you first offer?”
Waldo had delivered himself of his idea—and it seemed nothing less than a proposal to put a spoke in the wheel of his wife’s plans as he conceived them! Decidedly rebellion was abroad—open and covert! It worked mightily in Godfrey; it was working even in Waldo.
“I don’t like your selling,” I said. “You’re the chief—I’m a cadet. But if you’re forced—I beg your pardon, Waldo! If you decide”—he pressed my arm again, smiling at my correction, but saying nothing—“to go, there’s nothing I should like so much as to settle down there myself. But I can’t outbid——”