Mrs. Abercarne looked up in astonishment.
“All these are your relations? You must have a great many, then?”
“Swarms of ’em.”
Mrs. Abercarne looked through her eyeglasses, no longer at the photographs, but at him.
“I should have thought among so many you might have found someone to manage your establishment without having to advertise,” she suggested.
Mr. Bradfield laughed.
“So I could. I could have found a hundred. Some to manage my establishment, some to manage me, some to do both. And then all those whom I had not selected would have come down upon me in a body, and my life wouldn’t have been worth a year’s purchase among them. It won’t be worth much when they find you are here, you and Miss Christina. I shouldn’t be surprised if they were to set fire to the house and burn us all up together.”
Mrs. Abercarne began to look frightened, while Chris was immensely amused.
“Even money, you see, Miss Christina,” he went on, turning to the girl, who indeed engrossed most of his attention, “doesn’t keep you free from all worries.”
“It does from the worst of them, though,” said Chris, sagely. “It saves you from all the little ones, which are much worse to bear every day than one big one now and then. Who wouldn’t rather have one bad attack of typhoid fever and have done with it than have, say toothache, every day? You can’t understand how much worse it is to deny yourself every day things which cost a penny, than to resist, once in a way, the temptation to spend a sovereign.”