"Oh, Lilias, you darling, as if you could!" exclaimed Val, flying at her and kissing her.
"Oh, yes, my dear, I could," calmly responded Lilly—"and I may just as well warn you at once that my ways are not your ways in a great many particulars, and that you'd find that out if I lived too long with you. No, I'm going home to-morrow—to my own life, and you and Gerald must live yours without me. I am ready to come, if ever either of you want me, but just now no one does that as much as Marjory and my father."
Lilias returned to Jewsbury-on-the-Wold, and Valentine for some days continued to talk of her with enthusiasm, and to quote her name on all possible occasions.
"Lilias says that I'll never make a good housekeeper, unless I bring my wants into a fixed allowance, Gerald. She says I ought to know what I have got to spend each week, and not to exceed it, whether it is a large or small sum. She says that's what she and Marjory always do. About how much do you think I ought to spend a week on housekeeping, Gerry?"
"I don't know, darling. I have not the most remote idea."
"But how much have we to spend altogether? We are very rich, are we not?"
"No, Valentine, we are very poor. In fact we have got nothing at all."
"Why, what a crease has come between your brows; let me smooth it out—there, now you look much nicer. You have got a look of Lilias, only your eyes are not so dark. Gerald, I think Lilias so pretty. I think she is the very sweetest girl I ever met. But what do you mean by saying we are poor? Of course we are not poor. We would not live in a house like this, and have such jolly, cosy, little dinners if we were poor. Why, I know that champagne that we have a tiny bottle of every evening is really most costly. I thought poor people lived in attics, and ate bread and American cheese. What do you mean by being poor, Gerald?"
"Only that we have nothing of our own, dearest; we depend on your father for everything."
"You speak in quite a bitter tone. It is sweet to depend on my father. But doesn't he give us an allowance?"