“Unfortunately I have very little to pay her with. We must make the little we have last as long as possible.”
“What did Maud Wrexham say?”
“She offered to lend me some.”
May got up from where she had been sitting next to him with her cheeks blazing. The idea of borrowing at all had been distasteful to her, and the idea that Maud should have offered it was intolerable.
“She offered to lend you money—you? And you—what did you say to her?”
“May dear, don’t behave like that. I said, of course, that I must ask you.”
May was all on fire with indignation. The offer appeared to her an insult, and she smarted under it as a horse under a lash. She felt that her vague disquietude for the last week or so was explained and justified. What business had Tom to be on such terms with another? Her anger included Tom too. He had not rejected it with surprise and scorn.
“You said you would consult me?” she asked. “And what answer did you suppose I should give you? Did you think I should say, ‘Take it’? Tom, you know me very little.”
“May, do be reasonable,” said Tom. “Perhaps I ought to have told you sooner, but the state is this: if no one offers to buy the Demeter, we have to face the fact that in a limited time we shall have no money left. What am I to do?”
But May hardly seemed to hear what he said.