"Oh, Edward, I am so glad," said Mrs. Clinton. "I hoped you might see your way to helping her. She will be so very grateful."
The Squire lifted himself out of his chair. "Oh yes, we'll do something or other," he said. "Well, get another governess then, Nina, and pay her—what do you want to pay her?—forty?"
Mrs. Clinton hesitated a moment. "I want to get the best I can," she said. "I want to pay her eighty at least."
The Squire, in his moods of good humour, was proof against all annoyance over other people's follies. He laughed. "Oh, I should make it a hundred if I were you," he said.
"When the boys had Mr. Blake in their holidays," said Mrs. Clinton, "he had five pounds a week, and only had to teach them for an hour a day."
"That's a very different thing," said the Squire. "Blake was a University man and a gentleman. You have to pay a private tutor well."
"I want to get a lady," said Mrs. Clinton, "and I should like one who had been to a University."
"Oh, my dear girl," said the Squire, moving off down the room, "have it your own way and pay her what you like. Now is there anything else I can do for you before I go and write a few letters?"
"You are very kind, Edward, in letting me have my way about this. There is one more thing. If the children went to school they would have extra lessons for music and drawing or anything else that they might show talent in. Joan and Nancy have both got talent. I want to be able to have masters for them, from Bathgate—or perhaps even from London—for anything special that their governess cannot teach them."
The Squire was at the door. "Well, upon my word!" he said, nodding his head at her. Then he went out of the room.