"And then I should like to have a nice, large, cheerful house, where mother could come and stay with me, for two or three months at a time, and get clear away from the worries of house-keeping and—" the tyranny of father, I am about to add, but pull myself up with a jerk, and substitute lamely and stammeringly "and—and—others."
"Any thing else?"
"I should not at all mind a donkey-carriage for Tou Tou, but I shall not insist upon that."
He is smiling broadly now. The shade has fled away, and only sunshine remains.
"And what for yourself? you seem to have forgotten yourself!"
"For myself!" I echo, in surprise, "I have been telling you—you cannot have been listening—all these things are for myself."
Again he has turned his face half away.
"I hope you will get your wish," he says shortly and yet heartily.
I laugh. "That is so probable, is not it? I am so likely to fall in with a rich young man of weak intellect who is willing to marry all the whole six of us, for that is what he would have to do, and so I should explain to him."
Sir Roger is looking at me again with an odd smile—not disagreeable in any way—not at all hold-cheap, or as if he were sneering at me for a simpleton, but merely odd.