"A good aunt needs no bush. I mean—oh, I don't know what I mean; but, of course, I ask nothing better than to secure you."
"No; you mean you think you'll get nothing better. Ha, ha! I agree with you. But Tibe and I didn't come here to be played with. You're giving us a very good lunch, but I have his future and mine to think of. I admit, I'm in want of an engagement as a traveling companion to ladies in Holland; but you aren't the only person to whom it occurs to put ads in Dutch papers. If you'd searched the columns of Het Nieus van den Dag you might have seen mine. I have not been without answers, and I don't know that I should care to be an aunt, anyway. It makes one seem so old. What I came to say was that, unless you can offer me an immediate engagement——"
"Oh, I can and do. I beg of you to be my aunt from this moment."
"Tibe to travel with me and have every comfort?"
"Yes, yes, and luxury."
"A pint of warm milk every morning, half a pound of best beef or chicken with vegetables at noon, two new-laid eggs at——"
"Certainly. He has but to choose—he seems to know his own mind pretty well."
"I don't think it a subject for joking. That duck was close to the edge of the table. We'd better talk business. Your letter said a hundred gulden a week to a suitable aunt, and a two months' engagement certain. Well, it's not enough. I should want at least three hundred dollars extra, down in advance (I can't do it in gulden in my head) for your sake."
"For my sake?"
"Don't you see, to do you credit as a relative, I must have things, nice things, plenty of nice things? Tartan blouses, and if not Tams, cairngorms. Yes, a cairngorm brooch would be realistic. I saw a beauty yesterday—only two hundred gulden. No aunt of yours can go for a trip on the waterways of Holland unless she's well fitted out."