What was money indeed! Had not Sir Josiah been in pursuit of it all his life, had he not seemed to worship it? Had not those plump knees of his been for ever bent to the Golden Calf?
"What's money, hey?" he cried. "Ho! William, William! Mr. Cuttlewell will take a glass of that old port with me!"
And William, the antique waiter, of the white side whiskers and the ancient evening dress suit and the large sized, untidy feet, shuffled away to fill the order, for their best and most respected customer.
"I'd like you to see the place, I should, Priestly, my boy! My daughter-in-law, Lady Kathleen, is giving a house warming on the fourteenth. Cutler's running down with me—going to take him down in the car. Hang it, Priestly, you shall come! My daughter-in-law, Lady Kathleen, says all my friends are her friends, and she means it, she's that sort. God bless her! There isn't a truer, sweeter woman on earth and so—so I say God bless her!" The tears came into his eyes, they trickled down his cheek.
Here was honest pride, honest and unfeigned! He lifted his glass of port, he beamed on them and gave them the toast from his heart. "My daughter-in-law, Lady Kathleen Homewood, God bless her!"
They smiled at him, they took it good naturedly, they knew his worth, a sound man Sir Josiah, good for at least a couple or three hundred thousand and very likely for a good deal more. When a man has a credit good for anything from two to four hundred thousand, who will not put up with his little ways, even though it might be a trifle boring for those who had not the pleasure of Lady Kathleen's acquaintance? So Priestly was asked and Cutler and Cuttlewell too, only unfortunately Cuttlewell could not come, but Jobson could and would!
When the expansive moment was past, Sir Josiah felt a little nervous. Had he overstepped the limits? Had he gone too far; would it not be encroaching on Kathleen's goodness? Conscience smote him. That he had bought and paid for the house, that he was sending down cases of wines regardless of cost, that he was ordering at the big London Stores with the most lavish hand and purse in the world, all that mattered nothing at all! But would Kathleen be annoyed? He wrote to her and received a letter that made his cheeks flush like those of a school miss of sixteen.
"Your friends are mine, bring them all, you cannot bring too many, especially if they are like you. Only let me know how many rooms you want, dear, and believe me to be your affectionate and grateful Kathleen."
"God bless her!" he said. "God bless her!" And that day he added Coombe to the list. What a time they would all have on the fourteenth! How he talked and bragged and boasted, yet strangely enough a change had come over his boasting, it was not of his Lordship the Earl, and her "Ladyship, the Earl's daughter, it was not of the "historical" mansion, and the period rooms and Davenham's whole hearted expenditure in the matter of furnishing the place, it was of "My daughter-in-law, Kathleen."
"Beautiful, ha, ha!" he laughed. "I'll shew you real beauty! You think Lesbia Carter and Sybil Montgomery, those actress girls, are beautiful and so they are, sweetly pretty girls they are, and I don't say one word against 'em, not me! But when you see my daughter Kathleen—Lady Kathleen, then you'll see beauty, then you'll see goodness and sweet gracious womanliness, my boy!"