In the gravity of the crisis, the remark tickled him; he laughed with a strange ring in his laughter.
"All right; run away, you sly little puss."
He smiled on as he poured out his tea; finding a relief in prolonging his sense of the humour of the suggestion, but his heart was heavy, and his brain a whirl. He did not ring again till he had finished tea.
She came in, and took her gloves out of her pocket.
"No! no!" he cried, strangely exasperated: "An end to this farce! Put them away. You don't need gloves any more."
She squeezed them into her pocket nervously, and began to clear away the things, with abrupt movements, looking askance every now and then at the overcast handsome face.
At last he nerved himself to the task and said: "Well, as I was saying, Mary Ann, the first thing for you to think of is to make sure of all this money—this fifteen thousand pounds a year. You see you will be able to live in a fine manor house—such as the squire lived in in your village—surrounded by a lovely park with a lake in it for swans and boats——"
Mary Ann had paused in her work, slop-basin in hand. The concrete details were beginning to take hold of her imagination.
"Oh, but I should like a farm better," she said. "A large farm with great pastures and ever so many cows and pigs and outhouses, and a—oh, just like Atkinson's farm. And meat every day, with pudding on Sundays! Oh, if father was alive, wouldn't he be glad!"
"Yes, you can have a farm—anything you like."