She would have been better pleased if she had not been obliged to tell him where she was going, but she could not do otherwise when he said he supposed she was walking for the benefit of the fresh morning air. He added to her discomfiture by requesting to be allowed to walk with her, and by offering to carry her basket. This threw Willy's mind into a good deal of a flutter. Why could she not have met this handsomely dressed gentleman sometime when she was not going to the grocery store to buy such things as stove-blacking and borax?
It seemed to her as if these commodities must suggest to the mind of any one rusty iron and obtrusive insects, and as articles altogether outside the pale of allusion in high-toned social intercourse.
It also struck her as a little odd that a gentleman should propose to accompany a lady when she was going on domestic errands; but then this gentleman was different from any she had known, and there were many ways of the world with which she was not at all acquainted.
Mr. Burke immediately began to speak of the visit of the day before. He had enjoyed seeing Mrs. Cliff again and he had never sat down to a better dinner.
"Yes," said Willy, "she likes good eatin', and she knows what it is, and if she had a bigger dining-room she would often invite people to dinner, and I expect the house would be quite lively, as she seems more given to company than she used to be, and that's all right, considerin' she's better able to afford it."
Mr. Burke took a deep satisfied breath. The opportunity had already come to him to speak his mind.
"Afford it!" said he. "I should think so! Mrs. Cliff must be very rich. She is worth, I should say—well, I don't know what to say, not knowing exactly and precisely what each person got when the grand division was made."
Willy's loyalty to Mrs. Cliff prompted her to put her in as good a light as possible before this man of the world, and her own self-esteem prompted her to show that, being a friend and relative of this rich lady, she was not ignorant of her affairs in life.
"Oh, she's rich!" said Willy. "I can't say, of course, just how much she has, but I'm quite sure that she owns at least—"
Willy wished to put the amount of the fortune at one hundred thousand dollars, but she was a little afraid that this might be too much, and yet she did not wish to make the amount any smaller than could possibly be helped. So she thought of seventy-five, and then eighty, and finally remarked that Mrs. Cliff must be worth at least ninety thousand dollars. Mr. Burke looked up at the sky and wanted to whistle.