"Really," Mr. Wycherly remonstrated, "what has that got to do with it? As a matter of fact my wards are boys."
All this time she had been making entries in the ledger; now she looked up to fire off, abruptly as before:
"The booking fee is one-and-six."
Mr. Wycherly took a handful of silver out of his pocket and abstracted this sum and laid it upon the desk. She of the ledger ignored the offering and continued her cross-examination:
"What wages?"
Mr. Wycherly mentally invoked a blessing upon Lady Alicia's practical head as he replied quite glibly, "From twenty to twenty-five pounds, but she must be trustworthy and capable."
"What outings?"
Here was a poser! But the fighting spirit had been roused in Mr. Wycherly. He would not be browbeaten by this stout, ungracious person who took his eighteenpence, and so far had done nothing but ask questions, affording him no information whatsoever.
"That," he retorted with dignity, "can be arranged later on."
"Your name and address?" was the next query, and when he furnished this information, carefully spelling his name, it pained him inexpressibly to note that she wrote it down as "Witcherby," at the same time remarking in a rumbling tone indicative of displeasure, "Very old 'ouses, most inconvenient, most trying stairs.... 'Ow soon do you want a general?"