“America!” he said. “Oh, Lord!” he groaned. “Do you want me to drop down dead here with a dull, sickening thud, Ann?”
“You're not going to drop down dead,” she replied convincedly. “You're going to stay here and do whatever it's your duty to do, now you've come into Temple Barholm.”
“Am I?” he answered. “Well, we'll see what I'm going to do when I've had time to make up my mind. It may be something different from what you'd think, and it mayn't. Just now I'm going to do what you tell me. Go ahead, Little Ann.”
She thought the matter over with her most destructive little air of sensible intentness.
“Well, it may seem like meddling, but it isn't,” she began rather concernedly. “It's just that I'm used to looking after people. I wanted to talk to you about your clothes.”
“My clothes?” he replied, bewildered a moment; but the next he understood and grinned. “I haven't got any. My valet—think of T. T. with a valet!—told me so last night.”
“That's what I thought,” she said maternally. “I got Mrs. Bowse to write to me, and she told me you were so hurried and excited you hadn't time for anything.”
“I just rushed into Cohen's the last day and yanked a few things off the ready-made counter.”
She looked him over with impersonal criticism.
“I thought so. Those you've got on won't do at all.”