“My dear Clare, why will you lay yourself open to be addressed in this manner?” he said gravely, and when he called her Clare she knew that he was very greatly displeased. “Why will you not pull your life together into some degree of order? Why descend to the level on which it is possible for your tradesmen to write to you in such terms as these?”
Lady Kenilworth, who was the most caline and coaxing of women when she chose, as she could be the most autocratic and brusque when she was with people she despised, rose, looked up in her brother’s face, and stroked the lappet of his coat with her pretty slender hand sparkling with its many rings.
“Write me a little check, Ronnie,” she said, “and don’t put my name; make it payable to bearer.”
He shook his head.
“Little checks or big checks, Mousie, don’t find their way to your tradesmen. You have played me that trick more than once; I will go to these people myself and pay them the whole account; but——”
“Oh, don’t pay them the whole!” said Mouse uneasily. “That would be great waste of money. If you can really spare me as much as this give it to me; I will find a thousand better uses for it than——”
“Paying a bill? I dare say. Sheridan was of your opinion; and when he was dying they sold his bed from under him.”
“They won’t sell mine, because my brother will be by my bedside,” said Mouse with a sunny yet plaintive smile in her forget-me-not like eyes.
“Don’t trust too much to that, my dear; I am mortal, and a good many years older than you,” he answered gravely as he folded up the Bond Street tradesmen’s threatening letter and put it in his coat pocket.
“You had better write a check for me, Ronald, indeed,” said his sister coaxingly; “it will look odd if you pay this, or if your people pay it, and I could do a great deal with all that money.”