“Mr Dando, Richard! How could that funny little creature help you?”
“Funny? Don’t you know that he is enormously rich?”
“What difference does that make? His gilding only seems to show up his roundness, like one of grandpapa’s pills.”
“Don’t talk of pills, miss, to a scion of the Skene family.”
“I am very sorry.”
“You have the curative principle in you, you little duck of a quack. Perhaps you have inherited it. I was very bad till I took you. Would you like a testimonial, dear? But seriously, there is no calculating what this business may cost me; and my savings don’t amount to much.”
“Richard!”
“Now, I know what you’re going to say. I will steal your heart, Ira; I will rob your lips, like a greedy boy in an orchard; I will thieve every bit of you else, but your money I won’t take. Think, if I touched it, in what a light it would seem to show me! No; Johnny put his wealth at my disposal once, and then I refused; but things have altered since. What was a speculation then, seems now a fairly promising investment. There’s only one objection.”
“What is it, dear?”
“Why, it would mean his helping me to you.”