“Oh yes, I remember she said Liphook was ‘beneficial’ to him.”
“If he died she would have her allowance, and be free.”
“No such luck,” said Walter. “Besides, if he died, there would be nowhere for him to go to—he’d have to come back again. Heaven wouldn’t have him, and, after all, he isn’t quite bad enough for the devil to use his coals upon.”
“Walter, you mustn’t talk in that way—you mustn’t, indeed;” and she put her hand over his mouth.
“All right,” he said, struggling to get free; “I won’t do it again.”
Mr. Fisher duly arrived the next afternoon. He was a little breathless, though he carefully tried to conceal it, and wore the air of deference, but decision, which he always thought the right one to assume to women. With much gravity he and Florence set out to buy the wedding-present. It resolved itself into a silver butter-dish with a silver cow on the lid, though Florence tried hard to make him choose a set of apostle spoons.
“A butter-dish will be much more useful, my dear lady.”
“It will be very useful,” Florence echoed, though she feared that Ethel would be a little disappointed when she saw the cow.
“And now,” said Mr. Fisher, in a benevolent voice, as they left the silversmith’s in Bond Street, “we are close to Gunters—if you would do me the honour to eat an ice?”
“I will do you the honour with great pleasure.” And she thought to herself, “His manner really is like Aunt Anne’s this afternoon. If she had only married him instead of that horrid Mr. Wimple, we would have called him uncle with pleasure.”