"I don't believe it," Richard cried, in vehement protest.
"Dickie, you're a darling," Mary Cathcart said.
Colonel Ormiston left off nursing his knee, and leaned a little further forward.
"Well then, will you come over to Brockhurst very often, and help us to make the wheels go round, and cheer us all up, and do us no end of good, though—I am a selfish, good-for-nothing spendthrift? You see I run through the list of my titles again to make sure this transaction is fair and square and above-board."
A silence followed, which appeared to Richard protracted to the point of agitation. He became almost distressingly conscious of the man's still, bronzed, resolute face on the one hand, of the woman's mobile, vivid, yet equally resolute face on the other, divining far more to be at stake than he had clear knowledge of. Tired and excited, his impatience touched on anger.
"Say yes, Mary," he cried impulsively, "say yes. I don't see how anybody can want to refuse Uncle Roger anything."
Miss Cathcart's eyes grew moist. She turned and kissed the boy.
"I don't think—perhaps—Dickie, that I quite see either," she answered very gently.
"Mary, you know what you've just said?" Ormiston's tone was stern. "You understand this little comedy? It means business. This time you've got to go the whole hog or none."
She looked straight at him, and drew her breath in a long half-laughing sigh.