'Oh! but you've got far more to befriend you than that,' returned Ted, with unconscious irreverence. 'But I'll tell you what, Stella: I cannot allow you to be poking about so much among these East-End paupers. If you want to give them money and things, why don't you engage some competent person to do it? There must be no end of people in London who would be thankful to go up those filthy stairs for ten shillings a day or so.'
'Do you think one can do everything by paying money, Ted?'
'Well, if you ask me point-blank, I never thought so little of what money can do for you as at the present moment. Look here!' As he spoke Ted drew a pocketbook out of his breast coat-pocket, and extracted from it a sheet of pale pink note-paper. 'There's your I O U for five shillings you lost to me at euchre last December twelve-months. That night, after I got home, I said to Larry I would keep this bit of paper till everything I had was yours. And now it is; and yet what can I do for you? Instead of flying round with me on a drag with proper thoroughbred horses when you go to places, you pick out a hansom with the screwiest brute you can see, so that you may go slow and give the animal a spell. And as for jewels or dresses, why, you don't spend nearly your own money, and you've never touched any of your settlements.'
'Well, now I am going to ask you for something, Ted. Is all you have really mine?'
'Well, you just try!'
'Give me two hundred acres of Strathhaye.'
'But the whole eighty thousand is yours.'
'Oh, that is too much. Give me two hundred acres to cut up into little farms——'
'Good Lord!' cried Ted, starting up with such a look of horror that Stella fairly smiled. 'But you're only making game of me, Stella! You are not serious! and is it some of the paupers you want to put there?' he cried, a new light breaking in on him.
'Yes; some of the people who come up from the country hoping to get work.'