"So you shall—or any colour you please. And I'll have my stable smart too, I promise you. White tiles all through. I shall have to do a bit myself, you know—looking after the horses, I mean—but nobody will know it."
"You'll keep a man, of course?"'
"A cheap one. Uncle Nathan went into figures with me last week. He was a bit vague, and I was a bit impatient and soon had enough of it. 'All I want to know,' I told him, 'is just exactly what income I can count upon,' and he said five hundred a year was the outside figure. Then, against that, you must set that he's getting a bit old and, of course, being another person's money, he's extra cautious. He admitted that if I sold out some shares and bought others, I could get pretty near another one hundred a year by it. But, of course, we've got to take a bite out of the money for furnishing and all the rest of it. My idea, as you know, is to invest a bit in a sleeping partnership, but he hasn't found anything of the sort yet, apparently. He's not the man he was at finding a bargain."
Here opened a good opportunity for her ambitions, and Cora ventured to take it.
"I wish you'd think twice about letting me start a little business. It's quite a ladylike thing, or I wouldn't offer it, but with my natural cleverness about clothes, and with all the time I've given to the fashions and all that—especially with the hats I can make—it seems a pity not to let me do it. You don't want much money to start with, and I should soon draw the custom."
"No," he said. "Time enough if ever we get hard up. I'm not going to have you making money. 'Tis your business to spend it. You'll be a lady, with your own servants and all the rest of it. You'll walk about, and pick the flowers in your garden, and pay visits; and if you do have a little trap, you can drive out to the meets sometimes when I go hunting. Why, damn it all, Cora, I should have thought you was the last girl who would ever want to do such a thing!"
"That's all you know," she said. "People who keep hat shops often get in with much bigger swells than ever we're likely to know at Mannamead, or Stoke either. They come into the shop and they see, of course, I'm a lady, and I explain that I only keep the shop for fun, and then I get to know them. I'd make more swell friends in my hat shop than ever you do on your horse out fox-hunting."
"I know a lot of swells, for that matter."
"Ask 'em to come to tea and then you'll see if you know 'em," she said. "'Tis no use for us to be silly. We're poor people, compared to rich ones, and we always shall be, so far as I can see. We must be content with getting up the ladder a bit—and that's all I ask or expect."
"I know my place all right, if that's what you mean," answered Ned. "I'm not anxious to get in with my betters, for they're not much use to me. I'm easily satisfied. I want for you to have a good time, and I mean for myself to have a good time. You can only live your life once, and a man's a fool to let worry come into his life if he can escape from it. The great thing in the world is to find people who think as you do yourself. That's worth a bit of trouble; and when you've found them, stick to them. A jolly good motto too."