“We shall not be able to stay in the house, Edwin,” his wife said to him one evening when they were sitting in the salon at dusk after Flore’s departure; nothing having led up to the remark.
“I fancy we should be as well out of it,” replied he.
“Oh, Edwin, let us go! If we can! There will be all the rent to pay up first.”
“All the what?” said he.
“The rent,” repeated Nancy; “up to the end of the term we took it for. About three years longer, I think, Edwin. That would be sixty pounds.”
“And where do you suppose the sixty pounds would come from?”
“I don’t know. There’s the impediment, you see,” remarked Nancy blankly. “We cannot leave without paying up.”
“Unless we made a moonlight flitting of it, my dear.”
“That I never will,” she rejoined, with a firmness he could not mistake. “You are only jesting, Edwin.”