"It is to be hoped that you may, then, some time, and that you will be turned out of it! That's my best wish for you, John Massingbird."
"I'd recommend you to be polite, young lady," returned John good-humouredly. "If I sue your husband for back rents, you'd not be quite so independent, I calculate."
"Back rents!" repeated she.
"Back rents," assented John. "But we'll leave that discussion to another time. Don't you be saucy, Sibylla."
"John," said Lionel, pointing to the papers, "are you aware that some valuable leases and other agreements are amongst those papers? You might get into inextricable confusion with your tenants, were you to mislay, or lose them."
"They are safe enough," said careless John, taking his pipe from his mouth to speak.
"I wish you had allowed me to put things in order for you. You will be wanting me to do it later."
"Not a bit of it," said John Massingbird. "I am not going to upset my equanimity with leases, and bothers of that sort. Good-bye, old fellow. Lionel!"
Lionel turned round. He had been going out.
"We part friends, don't we?"