Salvina's eyes blazed. The nerveless creature of the school became a fury. "And you'd touch that!"
"Hang it all, he owes us reparation. You, too, Salvina—he is anxious to do everything for you. He says you must chuck up school—it's simply wearing you away. He says he wants to take you abroad—to Paris."
"Oh, and so he thinks he'll get round mother by getting round me, does he? But let him take his furniture away at once, or we'll pitch it into the street. At once, do you hear?"
"He won't mind." Lazarus smiled irritatingly. "He wants to put better furniture in, and his real desire is to move to a big house in Highbury New Park. But I persuaded him to put back the old furniture—I thought it would touch you—a token, you know, that he wanted 'auld lang syne.'"
"Yes, yes, I understood," said Salvina, and then she thought suddenly of Kitty and a burst of hysteric laughter caught her. "Elopements economically conducted," went through her mind. "By the day or hour!" And she imagined the new phrases Kitty would coin. "The Prodigal Father and the Pantechnicon"—"The old Love and the old Furniture," and the wild laughter rang on, till Lazarus was quite disconcerted.
"I don't see where the fun comes in," he said wrathfully. "Father is very sorry, indeed he is. He quite cried to me—on that very chair where mother is sitting. I swear to you he did. And you have the heart to laugh!"
"Would you have me cry, too? No, no; I am glad he is punished."
"Yes—a nice miserable lonely old age he has before him."
"He has plenty of money."
"You're a cold, unfeeling minx! I don't envy the man who marries you, Salvina."