“Well!”
“There is no reason, I suppose,” Mr. Sabin continued, “why a portion of the vacation you were speaking of should not be spent there?”
“None!” the girl replied, “except that it would be deadly dull, and no holiday at all. I should want paying for it.”
Mr. Sabin looked down at the cheque-book which lay open before him.
“I was intending,” he said, “to offer you a cheque for fifty pounds. I will make it one hundred, and you will rejoin your family circle at Fakenham, I believe, in one week from to-day.”
The girl made a wry face.
“The money’s all right,” she said; “but you ought to see my family circle! They are all cracked on farming, from the poor old dad who loses all his spare cash at it, down to little Letty my youngest sister, who can tell you everything about the last turnip crop. Do ride over and see us! You will find it so amusing!”
“I shall be charmed,” Mr. Sabin said suavely, as he commenced filling in the body of the cheque. “Are all your sisters, may I ask, as delightful as you?”
She looked at him defiantly.
“Look here,” she said, “none of that! Of course you wouldn’t come, but in any case I won’t have you. The girls are—well, not like me, I’m glad to say. I won’t have the responsibility of introducing a Mephistocles into the domestic circle.”