Evidently she was doing a sum in mental arithmetic. After a few seconds' silence she answered bravely——
"About twelve pounds a year."
"Hang twelve pounds a year!" I shrieked. Then something odd seemed to happen in my inner workings. My blood gave a jump and flew up to my head, where I could hear it singing—a wild, excited song. Perhaps it was the Eau de Cologne, and not being used to it in my bath, which made me feel like that. "I shan't invest my motor-boat," I said. "I'm going a cruise in it, and so are you."
"My darling girl, I hope you haven't gone out of your mind from the blow!" There was alarm and solicitude in Phil's accents. "When you've slipped on your dressing-gown and come out we'll talk things over."
"Nothing can make me change my mind," I answered. "It's been made up a whole minute. Everything is clear now. Providence has put a motor-boat into our hands as a means of seeing life, and to console us for not being Captain Noble's heiresses, as Mrs. Keithley wrote we were going to be. I will not fly in Providence's face. I haven't been brought up to it by you. We are going to have the time of our lives with that motor-boat."
The door shook with Phil's disapproval. "You do talk like an American," she flung at me through the panel.
"That's good. I'm glad adoption hasn't ruined me," I retorted. "But could you—just because you're English—contentedly give up our beautiful plans, and settle down as if nothing had happened—with your type-writer?"
"I hope I have the strength of mind to bear it," faltered Phyllis. "We've only had two days of hoping for better things."
"We've only lived for two days. There's no going back; there can't be. We've burned our ships behind us, and must take to the motor-boat."
"Dearest, I don't think this is a proper time for joking—and you in your bath, too," protested Phil, mildly.