"I mean that you really are in difficult waters. How has it come to pass that the weekly accounts have accumulated in this way?"
He laughed a little forced laugh, but he looked relieved, too.
"The process is simple. They keep sending 'em in!"
"And then it is said—forgive me if I appear intrusive—that you gave orders for wine and such things out of Whitford. And that does not incline the people of the place to be patient."
"Well, by Jove!" exclaimed Algernon, throwing himself back in his chair and thrusting his hands into his pockets, "that is the most absurd—the most irrational—the most preposterous reason for being angry with me! They grumble when I run up a bill with them, and they are affronted when I don't!"
"Does your wife understand—or—or control the household expenditure?"
"Bless you, no! She has not the very vaguest ideas of anything of the kind. When she had an allowance from her uncle for her dress, my lord used to have to come down every now and then with a supplementary sum of money to get her out of debt."
He spoke with an air of perfectly easy amusement, and without a trace of anxiety; unless, perhaps, an accustomed ear might have detected some constraint in his voice.
"But could she not be made to understand? Why not give her some hints on domestic economy? It should be done kindly, of course. And surely her own good sense——"
Algernon pursed up his mouth and raised his eyebrows.