“Mr. Meres, I shall be one-and-twenty a fortnight to-day.”
“I know it, Ada.”
He watched her under his brows; she was smiling, with tremor of the lips.
“I went down to look at my property,” were her next words.
Mr. Meres made no answer.
“You will never, I fear, be able to congratulate me.”
He shifted on his chair, but still said nothing.
“And if you do not, who will?” pursued the girl. “I am afraid I shall be very friendless. Do you think it will be worth while to have a London house as well as Knights-well?”
“You will scarcely need one,” said the other, tapping his knee with a paper-knife, and speaking in rather a gruff voice.
“Some people in my position,” Ada went on, “would half wish that such wealth had never come to trouble them. They might be tempted to say they would have nothing to do with it.”