"I hardly like to order things without telling you, papa. And there are a few other articles of furniture needed."
"You can get what you want. Run up to town and go to Barlow's. You can do that as well as I can."
"But I should have liked to have settled something about our future way of living before Mary comes," said Patience in a very low voice.
Sir Thomas frowned, and then he answered her very slowly. "There can be nothing new settled at all. Things will go on as they are at present. And I hope, Patience, you will do your best to make your cousin understand and receive favourably the future home which she will have to inhabit."
"You may be sure, papa, I shall do my best," said Patience;—and then Sir Thomas went.
He did return to the villa before his journey to Southampton, but it was only on the eve of that journey. During the interval the two girls together had twice sought him at his chambers,—a liberty on their part which, as they well knew, he did not at all approve. "Sir Thomas is very busy," old Stemm would say, shaking his head, even to his master's daughters, "and if you wouldn't mind—" Then he would make a feint as though to close the door, and would go through various manœuvres of defence before he would allow the fort to be stormed. But Clarissa would ridicule old Stemm to his face, and Patience would not allow herself to be beaten by him. On their second visit they did make their way into their father's sanctum,—and they never knew whether in truth he had been there when they called before. "Old Stemm doesn't in the least mind what lies he tells," Clarissa had said. To this Patience made no reply, feeling that the responsibility for those figments might not perhaps lie exclusively on old Stemm's shoulders.
"My dears, this is such an out-of-the-way place for you," Sir Thomas said, as soon as the girls had made good their entrance. But the girls had so often gone through all this before, that they now regarded but little what ejaculations of that nature were made to them.
"I have come to show you this list, papa," said Patience. Sir Thomas took the list, and found that it contained various articles for bedroom and kitchen use,—towels, sheets, pots and pans, knives and forks, and even a set of curtains and a carpet.
"I shouldn't have thought that a girl of eighteen would have wanted all these things,—a new corkscrew, for instance,—but if she does, as I told you before, you must get them."
"Of course they are not all for Mary," said Patience.