Joyce clutched her father’s arm, and shook him a little.
“Father! Tell me the truth. You’re not going to sell Holme Ottery?”
“Sell it, my dear? Who would buy it? It’s most unlikely that any one in the world would buy it. It costs a fearful lot of money to keep up. Look at it now—going to rack and ruin. A white elephant, Joyce. What with income tax, land tax, death duties, price of labour—”
“Have you put it up for sale?”
Joyce stamped her foot, and her blue eyes looked piercingly into her father’s grey ones. His were less courageous. He looked sheepishly at Bertram, of whose presence he had previously taken no notice at all.
“My dear Joyce,” he said, “I wish you wouldn’t be so imperious! I’m an old man now. I’m getting devilish hard-pressed in my old age, and I have the right to a little domestic peace.”
“Father, have you put it up for sale?”
He hesitated, shifted a little from one foot to the other, and poked up a stone in the path with his thick cudgel.
“Well, my dear, I suggested to those damn fellows, Huxted and Wells, that they might get an offer some time.”
It was the confession that Holme Ottery had been put up for sale. Joyce accepted it as such.