“Yes,” regarding them critically,—"ev-er-y bit,” with a little nod for every syllable.
“Won-der-ful!” with an air of complimentary incredulity. “May I ask if there is anything you can not do?”
“There is absolutely nothing,” sententiously. And then somehow or other they were standing close together, as usual, his arm around her waist, her hands clasped upon his sleeve. “When we get the house in Putney, or Bayswater, or Peckham Eise, or whatever it is to be,” she said, laughing in her most coaxing way, “this sort of thing will be convenient. And it is to come, you know,—the house, I mean.”
“Yes,” admitted Griffith, with dubious cheerfulness, “it is to come,—some time or other.”
But her cheerfulness was not of a dubious kind at all. She only laughed again, and patted his arm with a charming air of proprietorship.
“I have got something else to show you,” she said; “something up-stairs. Can you guess what it is? Something for Mollie,—something she wanted which is dreadfully extravagant.”
“What!” exclaimed Griffith. “Not the maroon silk affair!”
“Yes,” her doubt as to the wisdom of her course expressing itself in a whimsical little grimace. “I could n't help it. It will make her so happy; and I should so have liked it myself if I had been in her place.”
She had been going to lead him up-stairs to show it to him as it lay in state, locked up in the parlor, but all at once she changed her mind.
“No,” she said; “I think you had better not see it until Mollie comes down in state. It will look best then; so I won't spoil the effect by letting you see it now.”