"Like a shot, if only I'd time! Did she tot to a hatful of money?"
"Something under £700. £500 of that goes for the new 'Gnome' engine. You see that German—" Sherbrand broke off.
"I remember! Pretty rough on you, that North Sea crossin' business. Must have been an awful loss. Look here!" Franky reddened again and began to flounder. "Could I—couldn't I—help with the boodle? Got £700 lying by idle. Frightfully glad if you'd let me chip in!—just in a cousinly sort o' way!"
"I am much obliged to you, Lord Norwater."
Confound the fellow! how he froze at the least hint of patronage. He went on, holding his head high:
"You are very kind, but I am not poor, unless as poverty is understood by people of your world. Apart from what my profession brings me I have something in the way of income. My mother's brother left me a sum of money that brings in yearly over £200." He went on as Franky regarded with unaffected interest the man who wasn't poor on two hundred per annum: "The principal—I suppose it tots up to £6,000—I shall naturally settle on my wife."
He warmed and brightened with the utterance of the word. His cold eyes grew soft and his brows smoothed pleasantly. He said with a glowing pride, and a kind of brave shyness that a woman who loved him would have adored:
"I have said nothing yet to Miss Saxham about my hopes of a Commission—I suppose for fear of not pulling the thing off. But the moment it comes along I shall persuade her to marry me. We'll be man and wife before I fly for the Front."
As cocky as though he had landed the biggest catch in the matrimonial waters, thought Franky, instead of that great, slangy, galumphing young woman without a halfpenny at her back. But he did the amiable, in a way characteristic of Franky, ushering the guest back to the luncheon-room, introducing "my cousin" to people worth knowing, doing the honours with a pleasant cordiality that won upon Sherbrand more and more.
Sherbrand took leave directly after lunch, saying that he had to catch the afternoon express for Bournemouth. He had left his bag and suit-case in the hall-porter's care. Would Patrine?—Patrine read the entreaty in the hiatus and yielded to it, saying Yes, she would drive with him, and see him off from Waterloo.