"Well," said the old lady slowly, "I think, Edward—if you don't mind—you won't be offended with me, I do hope—I have no wish in the least to make it conditional—but I should take it as a great compliment if you would tell me first—when you have made up your mind—what allowance you yourself had thought of."
The Squire stared at her, and then burst out laughing. In an unwonted flash of insight he saw what she would be at, the diffident, submissive, gentle old woman, to whom he and everything he did or said were above all admitted criticism. "Well, if you must push me into a corner, Aunt Laura," he said, "I may as well settle the figure with you now. I'll start them with fifteen hundred a year and a house. There now. What are you going to put to that?"
"I will put to that," replied Aunt Laura, equally prompt, "another five hundred a year, and the dear young people will be very well off."
The Squire stared again. "By Jove!" he said in astonishment, "I'd no idea you meant to do anything of that sort."
"But you said it would make no difference to what you would do," she said a little anxiously.
The Squire leant forward in his chair and touched her knee. "Aunt Laura," he said, "you are a very clever old lady."
"Oh, Edward," she expostulated, "I hope you don't think——"
"Oh, you knew," he said, leaning back again in great good-humour, "you knew well enough. If you had told me you were going to that figure at first, you knew that I should be thinking that twelve hundred a year from me instead of fifteen would do very well. And that's just what I should have thought, by Jove! Any man would. However, I have no wish to save my pocket at the expense of yours, and we'll let it stand at what I said. But I say, are you sure you can manage it all right? It's a good deal of money, you know. You won't be narrowing yourself, eh? I shouldn't like to feel that you weren't every bit as comfortable as you ought to be—what?"
Aunt Laura assured him that she would remain every bit as comfortable as she ought to be, and finally he left her and walked home, whistling to himself every now and then as he went over the points of their conversation, and once or twice laughing outright at his memories. "By Jove! she had me," he said to himself, after he had gained the comparative seclusion of his park and could stop in the road to give vent to his merriment. "Who'd have thought it of old Aunt Laura?"