“Didn’t I say so in my letter?”
Basil was always literal. He took out her letter and read it again.
“Stupid,” said Minna. “I meant it if I didn’t say it.”
She laid down the knife and the loaf and submitted to her lover’s embraces.
Basil could not contain his delight:
“There’s my one-fifty a year. I can make three hundred the first year, five hundred the next, a thousand the next . . .”
“A thousand!”
“We’ll live in a studio first of all. Then we’ll live in a house and give dinner to the dealers and editors. And then we’ll live in a house with a studio and the dealers and editors shall give dinner to us.”
“That will be fun,” said Minna.
Together they carried the tea-tray upstairs and broke the news of their engagement to Mrs. Folyat. Frederic and Jessie Clibran-Bell were there. They had been conspiring with Mrs. Folyat to bring about a speedy wedding. With the assistance of Mr. Clibran-Bell Frederic had been taking work on his own account and had made fifty pounds in a year. Herbert Fry had assisted him by letting him act as his agent—on condition that he had Frederic’s agency work in London—and now there was talk of his setting up in an office of his own, if his father could guarantee him one year’s expenses.