"I do hope they will," she replied, "because when we leave here dad and I are going to stay for a week or so with some friends quite near. There! Did you hear that noise? That's daddy stamping because he is getting impatient."
"Then perhaps—" David suggested.
"I suppose we'd better," she interrupted. "Be lenient about the bathroom, please. And if you could manage not to notice that the dining room wants papering, you'd be an angel. This way."
CHAPTER XIX
David proved himself such a very satisfactory incoming tenant that the Colonel insisted upon his staying to lunch and hastened off into the cellar to find a bottle of old Marsala, of which he proposed that they should partake with a dry biscuit before Mr. Merridrew's departure. Sylvia sank into a low chair with a little exclamation of despair.
"Now daddy's done it!" she exclaimed. "Are you hungry, Mr. Thain?"
"Not very—yet," David replied, glancing at his watch. "You see, it's only half-past eleven."
"Because," she said impressively, "there are exactly three rather skinny cutlets in the house. All the servants left this morning—'all', I said. We only have two!—and an old woman from the village is coming up at half-past twelve to cook them. One was for me and two were for father. Perhaps you will tell me what I am to do?"
David smiled.