“The more you do for me, the more I’ll spoil you. It will be quite an exciting race. How should you like being spoiled for a change?”
“It would be glorious. So irresponsible.”
“Exactly. That’s what makes many a man get drunk. Few sensations so delightful as that of complete irresponsibility.”
“Do you get drunk?” asked Julia, in mock alarm.
“Gorgeously. Am I not a good San Franciscan? Not too often, however. Bad for business.”
“You never told me if you went on that spree when you got those ten thousand dollars. Or didn’t you get it? Perhaps you anticipated, and your father wouldn’t—what did you call it—plunk?”
“I didn’t, and he did, and I did. I whooped it up for just five days. To tell you the truth, I didn’t find as much in it as I expected, but felt I owed it to myself. Wish now I’d come over and eloped with you.”
“Ah!” Julia made a rapid mental calculation. He would have arrived at about the time Nigel was laying his last desperate siege. Poor Nigel! Julia could picture Tay’s wooing and methods. Would he have won where her more courtly knight had failed?
“Suppose I had never turned up?” asked Tay, abruptly. “That husband of yours can’t live forever, is many years older than you, anyhow. Do you fancy you would have eventually married Herbert? Corking books! He must be some man.”
Julia had flushed to her hair. “How did you know I was thinking of him?” she stammered.