“I’ll rout out Pacey and Leronde, and we’ll go up the river for a row.”
He rang the bell and waited, giving one more glance at his picture, and then turning it face to the wall, with the curtain drawn.
He had hardly finished when Keren-Happuch’s step was heard at the door, and she knocked and entered.
“You ring, please, sir?”
“Yes. Take this money. No—no—stop a moment. She would be hurt,” he muttered, and, hastily wrapping it in a sheet of note-paper at the side table, he thrust the packet into an envelope, fastened it down, and directed it to La Signora Azacci.
“There, Keren-Happuch,” he said.
“Don’t call me that now, please, Mr Dale, sir. I likes the other best, ’cause you don’t do it to tease me, like Mr Pacey.”
“Well then, Miranda, my little child of toil,” he said merrily, “I have wrapped up this money because the young lady might not like it given to her loose. It isn’t that I don’t trust you.”
The girl laughed.
“Zif I didn’t know that, sir. Why, you give me a fi’ pun’ note to get changed once.”