“Say what time and I’ll send the car for you.“
The tone was so final that anything she could raise in the way of protest seemed weakly ridiculous. But the car for her! She didn’t want the car and she mustered force enough to say so.
“Might as well have it. Doing nothing Sunday. Save you a climb up the hill this hot weather.”
Of one thing, however, she was quite sure. She didn’t want the car. This recent and remarkable expression of her father’s wealth and ever-growing social importance had taken the form of a superb motor and a smart lady chauffeur in the neatest of green liveries which already she had happened to see on two occasions in Waterloo Square. No, such a vehicle was not for her; and she contrived to say so with the bluntness demanded by the circumstances, yet tempered a little by a certain regard for anything her father might be able to muster in the way of feelings.
“Might as well make use of it,” he said. “Eating its head off Sunday afternoon.”
But she remained quite firm. The car was not for her.
“Well, it’s there for you if you want it.” His air was majestic. “Better pay that money into the bank. And I shall tell your mother to expect you Sunday tea time.”
It was left at that. He had gained both his points. The third was subsidiary; it didn’t matter. All the same it was like Josiah to raise it as a cover for those that did.