Maria nodded. "It's just the thing for Joan. Really a godsend. She worries me more than all three of the boys. They are east at school for the winter and of course don't come home for the Christmas holidays. If you want to be housekeeper you may. I don't know anything I should like better than a rest from ordering dinner, after all these years."
"Perfect! I'll also take care of my room and Morty's. Then I'd be sure
I wasn't really imposing on you. You're a dead game sport, Maria, and
I'd like to drink your health."
CHAPTER XV
I
Mortimer looked nonplussed when Alexina informed him at dinner of the immediate solution of their difficulties. He detested Tom and Maria Abbott; there were certain things he could forget in his aristocratic wife's presence, far as she had withdrawn, but never in theirs. Moreover he feared Abbott. He was as keen as a hawk; an unconsidered word and he might as well have told the whole story. Well, he never talked much anyhow; he would merely talk less.
When Alexina asked him if he had any better plan to propose he was forced to shrug his shoulders and set his lips in a straight line of resignation. When she told him what her original plan had been he was so appalled, so humiliated at the bare thought of his wife in a servant's apron (to say nothing of the culinary arrangements) that he almost warmed to the Abbotts.
II
Ten days later, on the eve of the Abbotts' arrival, the equanimity of spirit he was striving to regain by the simple process of thinking of something else when his late delinquencies obtruded themselves, received a severe shock. Alexina handed him a cheque for ten thousand dollars and asked him to place it to Gora's account in the bank where she kept her savings.
"Where did you get it?" he asked stupidly, staring at the slip of paper so heavily freighted.
"Anne Montgomery sold some of my things to a good-natured ignoramus whose husband made a fortune in Tonopah. She doesn't know how to buy and Anne advises her."