She smiled, looked up brightly, and said,
"You promise?"
"I do."
"If you don't keep your promise, I shall have to take severe measures. Don't fancy me without money. I could pay you now—at least I think so."
It was a great good sign of her that she could talk about money plainly as she did. It wants a thoroughbred soul to talk just right about money. Most people treat money like a bosom-sin: they follow it earnestly, but do not talk about it at all in society.
"I only pay six shillings a week for my lodgings!" she added, with a merry laugh.
What had become of her constraint and stateliness? Courtesy itself seemed gone, and simple trust in its place! Was she years younger than he had thought her? She was hemming something, which demanded her eyes, but every now and then she cast up a glance, and they were black suns unclouding over a white sea. Every look made a vintage in the doctor's heart. There could be no man in the case! Only again, would fifty pounds, with the loss of a family ring, serve to account for such a change? Might she not have heard from somebody since he saw her yesterday? In her presence he dared not follow the thought.
Some books were lying on the table which could not well be Mrs.
Puckridge's. He took up one: it was In Memoriam.
"Do you like Tennyson?" she asked.
"That is a hard question to answer straight off," he replied.—He had once liked Tennyson, else he would not have answered so.—"Had you asked me if I liked In Memoriam" he went on, "I could more easily have answered you."