“I shall not. Why, what should I spend money on?”
“Depend upon it, there will be a score of things.” He added with a slight smile, “At any moment a peddler may come to the door and you will buy a broom from him or a chintz patch or some such thing!”
“Well, if I do that is quite my own affair. I had rather you did not give me any money.”
“You are overscrupulous, ma’am, but since you have this extreme nicety I will place a sum in Miss Beccles’ charge.”
She almost stamped her foot at him. “I wish you will not treat me as though I were a schoolgirl, my lord!” she said. She read an answer in his eye, and added hurriedly, “And do not tell me that I behave as one, because it is quite untrue!”
“Certainly not. I know you to be a sensible woman, a little too much in the habit of having your own way.”
She fairly gasped. “This reproach from you, my lord!”
“Very true. We agreed, did we not, that my disposition is overbearing? But you will own that my way is in general more reasonable than yours.”
“Not while I still retain the possession of my faculties!” she declared. “Indeed, I do not know how you dare make such a claim! It quite takes my breath away! When I consider in what apposition you have placed me, and then am obliged to listen to you talking as though you had done nothing out of the ordinary, but on the contrary had acted in the best possible manner—”
“Well, you know, ma’am, given a situation which you will allow to have been excessively awkward, I think I did,” he said.