His hostess did not check him. The man was usually rather daring, and she seldom resented a speech of this kind, no matter from whom it came.
"In any case, I am not going," she informed him. "That"—she pointed to the bundle of papers—"is the reason."
"Bills? Permit me."
Before she could prevent it he took them up and flicked them over. Then he turned and looked at her with a smile in his dark eyes.
"On examination of them I'm inclined to think the reason's a good one."
Florence recognized that he had ventured further in the last few minutes than Elcot would have done in a month before he married her, and, though she was not greatly displeased, she changed the subject, for a time.
"What did you want to see my husband about?" she asked.
"I'm anxious to disarm his opposition to the part I feel like taking in the Bluff Creamery scheme. I'm willing to back the experiment on reasonable terms, but I understand that Elcot's dubious about permitting it; and Thorne has been advising the boys to have nothing to do with me. Rough on a man who's ready to finance them, isn't it?"
Florence did not care whether it was rough or not. Except that she would have liked to spend double her husband's income, financial questions seldom interested her.
"I suppose you wish to do it to encourage them—out of philanthropy?" she suggested with a yawn.