"No, dear," said Dorothy, her eyes downcast.
"Then there was Fortune and Brooks," Stan continued with a great air of discovery. "I see their game now. You see it too, don't you?—They just wanted orders. New accounts. That's what they wanted. If I could have put 'em on to a chap who'd have spent say five hundred a year on Chutney and things—well, what I mean is, where would they be without customers like that?"
"Nowhere, dear," said the dutiful Dorothy.
"Exactly. Nowhere. That's what I was leading up to. They wouldn't be anywhere. They just wanted to be put on to these things. And it's just struck me how I should have looked, going out to dinner somewhere, strange house very likely, and I'd said to somebody I'd perhaps met for the first time, 'Don't think much of these salted almonds; our hostess ought to try the F. and B. Brand, a Hundred Gold Medals, and see that the blessed coupon isn't broken.'—Eh? See what I mean?"
"I was never very keen on the idea," Dorothy admitted gravely.
"No, and I'm blessed if I see why I was, now," Stan conceded cheerfully....
She loved this change in him which a real job with real money had brought about. Poor old darling, she thought, it must have been pretty rotten for him before, borrowing half-crowns from her in the morning, which he would spend with an affected indifference on drinks and cab fares in the evening. And he should speak with a new authority if he wished. Not for worlds would she have smiled at His Impudence's new air of being master in his own house. He should be a Sultan if he liked—provided he didn't want more than one wife.
Moreover, his bringing in of money had been a relief so great that even yet she had hardly got out of the habit of reckoning on her own earnings only. It had taken her weeks to realize that now the twopences came in just a little more quickly than they went out, and that she could actually afford herself the luxury of keeping Mr. Miller waiting for his Idea, or even of not giving it to him at all. She really had no Idea to give him. She was entirely wrapped up now in her plot against Lady Tasker.
That plot, summarized from several conversations with Stan, was as follows:—
"You see, there's the Brear, with all that land, Aunt Grace's very own. The Cromwell Gardens lease is up in June, and it's all very well for auntie to say she doesn't hate London, but she does. She spends half a rent, with one and another of them, in travelling backwards and forwards, and she's getting old, too.—Then there's us. We can't go on living here, and the Tonys will be home just as Tim's leave's up, and they're sure to leave their Bits behind. Very well. Now the Tims and the Tonys can't afford to pay much, but they can afford something, and I think they ought to pay. They're sure to want those boys to go into the Army, and they'd have to pay for that anyway.—So there ought to be a properly-managed Hostel sort of place, paying its way, and a fund accumulating, and Aunt Gracie at the head of it, poor old dear, but somebody to do the work for her.—I don't see why we shouldn't clear out that old billiard-table that nobody ever uses, and throw that and the gun-room into one, and make that the schoolroom, and have a proper person down—a sort of private preparatory school for Sandhurst and Woolwich, and the money put by to help with the fees afterwards. It would be much easier if we all clubbed together. And I should jolly well make Aunt Eliza give us at least a thousand pounds—selfish old thing."