"Was there anyone else there?" Matilda was still curious.
"Yes—a man left when I was going in. He had a clever face. I shall like him, I believe, if he comes there often."
"You won't go falling in love with any of them gentlemen, Kitten," Matilda pleaded affectionately.
She felt that things might develop as they did in the cases of the innocent actresses and governesses and the villains in her serials.
"Have I ever been given to falling in love?" Katherine asked with a humorous flash in her eyes.—"You have not seen me tumble into the arms of Charlie Prodgers or Percy Watson—have you?"
"No, dearie, but these gentlemen in your new biz might be different and might not mean so honest by you. I do wish I could hope to see you settled with Charlie some day. He is such a dear fellow, and very rising. He'll be head clerk at the estate agent's he is in very soon, and could give you a comfortable home like this is for your own; and no need to be hanging on for years like Glad and Bob."
"Can you picture me settled in a comfortable home with Charlie Prodgers, Tild!" Katherine laughed out at the idea, it seemed so comic to her. "He is as great a snob as Fred, and even more ignorant. I would not let him button my boots, much less call himself my husband! I'd as soon be dead as tied to that! At Brixton, too! With the prospect of being the mother of numbers of sandy-haired little Prodgers. What an outlook!"
Matilda was hurt. They had never spoken in words upon this secret hope of hers, but she had often hinted at it, and Katherine had been silent and seemingly preoccupied, but not actually scornful, and to have the scheme denounced with derision and the happy picture scoffed at was a blow to her which she could not bear in silence. She felt indignant.
"Charlie Prodgers is good enough for any young lady. Mabel herself thinks highly of him. He is one of the few of Fred's gentlemen friends that she thinks worthy to be asked into her mother's house—and I would have liked to have seen you married into her set safely before she becomes our sister-in-law, and can patronise you."