“Well, you see,” said Pauline judicially, “we have our living to get, and then there’s our flat, and——”
“I don’t know how much you earn,” Ilam cried. “But I’ll cheerfully undertake to give you treble, whatever it is.”
“That would be five hundred and forty-six pounds a year, then,” said Rosie, who was specially good at arithmetic.
“Let us say six hundred,” Ilam amended the figure with a tremendously casual air.
The girls felt that, after all, perhaps he resembled a millionaire more than they had at first thought.
“Come, now,” Ilam urged. “Say yes. It’s an idea that came to me all of a sudden, while I was talking to you. But it’s an idea that gets better and better the more I think about it.”
“But we couldn’t give up our situations,” objected Pauline.
“Why not?” Ilam asked.
“I don’t know,” Pauline stammered. “It seems so queer. It’s so sudden. What would our duties be here?”
“Your duties would be to act as mistresses of this house, and to look after my poor mother. Of course, there’d be a nurse as well. I don’t know how many servants there are—five or six.”