‘What am I to do then?’ she asked.
He took his cheque-book out of his drawer and wrote.
‘Take that on account, please,’ he said. ‘If you want to be business-like, give me a receipt. And I advise you to spend some of it on a little holiday.’
She looked at the cheque.
‘I can’t take that as part payment,’ she said. ‘It is fully as much as the completed catalogue will cover.’
‘You are very obstinate,’ he said. ‘I will get an independent estimate of what is a fair price for the completed catalogue when you have finished it, and adjust my payment by that. Will that satisfy you?’
‘Quite. But it seems to me I am far from obstinate. I have given way.’
‘Of course. I credit you with so much sense.’
Suddenly Norah found she did not mind yielding to him. She was rather surprised at that, for she knew there was some truth in Charles’s criticism that she preferred her own way to anybody else’s. It was an amiable way, but she liked having it. But now when Keeling so much took it for granted that she was going to do as he suggested, she found she had no objection to it. She wondered why....
‘Thank you very much,’ she said. ‘I will try to persuade Charles to take your advice too, and come away for a few days. And now I’ll go down to your house. Oh, your receipt. Shall I write it and file it?’