“Mr. Dene!”
“Maria!”
She began to say, hurriedly, that her mother had sent her with a message to the dressmaker on the Parade, and she had taken that way, as being the shortest—as if in apology for having met Sam.
He turned with her, and they paced slowly along side by side, the colour on Maria’s cheeks coming and going with every word he spoke and every look he gave her—which seemed altogether senseless and unreasonable. Sam told her of his conversation with Austin Chance’s father, and his promise to put a few things in his way.
“Once let me be making two hundred a-year, Maria, and then——”
“Then what?” questioned Maria innocently.
“Then I should ask you to come to me, and we’d risk it together.”
“Risk what?” stammered Maria, turning her head right round to watch a barge that was being towed by.
“Risk our luck. Two hundred a-year is not so bad to begin upon. I should take the floor above as well as the ground-floor I rent now, and we should get along. Any way, I hope to try it.”