“No, my dear, it’s nothing more than natural,” she said, as I partook of tea with her; and in her affection for me she tried very hard to make me bilious with the amount of butter in which she soaked my toast. “You being a gentleman’s son, and having had a par and a mar, it was no more than one might expect, for gentlefolks to take notice of you. That Miss Carr’s a real lady, and I shouldn’t wonder if she was to leave you no end of money when she died.”
“Oh, Mary!” I cried, “just as if I wanted Miss Carr to die and leave me her money. I mean to earn some for myself, and when I get rich, you and Revitts shall come and live with me.”
“That we will,” said Mary. “I’ll be your cook, Master Antony, and Bill shall be—shall be—”
“Bailiff and steward.”
“Or else gardener,” she said. “So you’re going to buy some new clothes, are you?”
“Yes, Mary; I must go well dressed to the engineer’s.”
“Then I should buy two more suits,” said Mary eagerly. “Have a good dark blue for Sundays, with gilt buttons, and for every day have invisible green.”
I shook my head.
“No, I must have black still, Mary, and grey,” I said.
“I wouldn’t dear; I’d have blue, and as for invisible green, you wouldn’t know as it wasn’t black.”