"Yes."
"Well, why don't you ask him to tell her to chuck it? I say, dear old thing, I wish I were nine years older!"
"If you were, I should be thirty-four!"
"I meant about the beastly money."
She laughed. "Funny little kiddie! You aren't going to have any money either. If we lived within our means we'd be enjoying life in a villa in some horrible suburb. We are hideously poor, Kingsmead."
She so rarely called him by his name that the boy felt alarmed. Pontefract, with his red neck and his short legs, seemed suddenly very near.
"Isn't there anyone else?" he blurted out, as she led the way towards the house. "I mean, any other chap with money?"
"No one with as much. And then, he isn't so very bad, Tommy. He's good-natured. Think of Clandon, or—Negroponte!" Her shudder was perfectly genuine.
"But Pontefract is so thundering old!"
She made no reply, and after a minute he went on: "What about Théo Joyselle?"