“Why, don’t you know? You are rich and we are poor. You live in the great house, and we are your tenants; that is, I believe auntie is to rent a cottage of your father, if it is not too high. We cannot give much, for auntie lost her shares in the bank last summer, and now she must do fluting and clear-starching and sewing for our living, as she will not touch my forty pounds; that she says is for my education, and I do so want to learn music. We can live on most nothing, only the rent takes money. Will it be very much?”
“No, not much,” Godfrey replied, a sudden thought flashing into his mind upon which he resolved to act, but not till he had made his compact with Gertie.
“You did not let me finish,” he said; “I want to make a bargain with you, which is this: I am to reform, and you are to tell me from time to time if I am improving, and when you really think I am a perfect gentleman, you are to let me kiss you again. Is it a fair bargain?”
Gertie considered a moment, and then said, with the utmost gravity:
“Ye-es,—I don’t believe there would be any harm in it, inasmuch as you did it for pay.”
“Then it is a bargain, and I begin from this minute to be a gentleman,” Godfrey cried, but his zeal was a little dampened by Gertie’s next remark.
“It may be a long time, Mr. Godfrey, and I’ll be grown up, and then it would not be proper at all.”
Here Robert Macpherson burst into a loud laugh and exclaimed:
“Better give it up, Schuyler; the child is too much for you.”
But Godfrey was not inclined to give it up, and said: