Kate went across and sat on the arm of the old lady's chair. "Do you want to smack me and put me to bed?"
"I've done it many a time when you've been in this mood."
"Can you see the black dog on my shoulder?"
"Larger than ever. Kate, you should try and control yourself."
"Oh, be just, Aunt. I didn't lie down on the floor and kick or do anything like that."
"No, thanks to me you can keep your temper under more decent control now. Now, don't you kiss me, and think I'm a silly old woman, and try to get round me that way—I know exactly how you're feeling. Oh, you'd lead any man a dance who married you."
"I'm certain I should," said Kate cheerfully, "unless he was the right one. But, Auntie dear, don't you think it would be safer not to press me to marry anyone at all? I give you my word for it that there's no one marriageable I want to marry. And if you leave me alone with my other amusement, that keeps me out of worse mischief."
At the Prince's Park house in the old days there had been a room known as the Master's study. It had no books in it whatever, because the excellent Godfrey disliked books. It had a writing-desk certainly, but never even an inkpot on it to indicate use. There was just a card-table and some early Victorian furniture of hard, uncompromising ugliness. In short, it was not the Master's study at all, but it emphatically was his card-room.
It remained in its original state till Kate's return from the Coast, and then she begged it from her Aunt, who gave it gladly.
"I want a place where I can type a letter," Kate had said, "and have a copying press, without going down to Water Street. They begin to stare at me down there, and I hate it. No one objects to a girl being in business if she is merely a clerk, but if she gets hold of big successes, well, the men aren't nice about it. If I find it answers, I may lay on a secretary."