“There!” she said, “Berrington can pay them and give me the rest in cash.”
Hugh got out of his chair.
“Sit in that,” he said, “and I’ll sit on the rug and lean against your knees if you will let me. Oh, hang! I don’t want to go to town to-morrow, and I don’t want to stop indoors all day. Let’s go out as we did in some of those gales in the winter and get soaked and buffeted.”
A great tattoo of rain, wind-driven, rattled against the windows.
“In that?” asked Edith.
“Yes; I love being alone with you in a gale on these downs. Don’t you remember once when we were riding how your hat wouldn’t stop on, and the wind blew your hair down? And I made you shriek Brunhilde’s cry?”
Hugh threw back his head till he could see her face above him.
“You love high winds, don’t you?” he said. “I think you love everything high. Oh, dear, what a true word Dick spoke when he said that my marriage might be the making of me. I don’t say I’m made, but, oh, how true that was.”
Edith pulled his hair gently.
“Oh, don’t say such silly things,” she said. “If you could hurt me, Hugh, which you can’t, it would be by that sort of absurdity. I thought your brother-in-law was such a sensible man till you told me he said that.”