She was cut short again.
“I don’t want to get used to you and to get you used to my ways and then for you to leave me,” she was told. “And I don’t want a young man constantly dangling round the house.” Her voice was sharp, but not unkind, and there was a smile in the keen eyes.
“No,” said Esther. “I quite understand.”
There was a little silence.
“Well,” said the owner of the lorgnette then, “what do you think about it? Do you think you would like to come? Do you think you would like me?”
Esther smiled, there was something in this blunt questioning that reminded her of June Mason.
“Yes,” she said. “I think I should, but–––”
“I hate that word,” she was told promptly. “I don’t want any ‘buts’ in the question. You either wish to come or you do not. I will give you fifty pounds a year, and your keep, of course. It’s too much for an inexperienced girl like you, but I think I shall rather like you. Well, what do you say?”
Esther did not know what to say. The offer was tempting enough, but she thought of June Mason and the room with the mauve cushions where she was settling down so happily, and her heart sank.