Nora held up her fan carelessly to smother a yawn. ‘I daresay it did, Tom,’ she answered with obvious unconcern; ‘but, you know, I told you I didn’t understand anything on earth about sugar; and you said it wasn’t about that that you wanted to talk to me in private this evening.’
‘Yes, yes, Nora; you’re quite right; it isn’t. It’s about a far deeper and more interesting subject than sugar that I’m going to speak to you.’ (Nora mentally guessed it must be rum.) ‘I only mentioned these facts, you see, just to show you the sort of yield we’re making now at Pimento Valley. Last year, we did five hundred hogsheads, and two hundred and eighty-four puncheons. A man who does a return like that, of course, must naturally be making a very tidy round little income.’
‘I’m awfully glad to hear it, I’m sure, for your sake,’ Nora answered unconcernedly.
‘I thought you would be, Nora; I was sure you would be. Naturally, it’s a matter that touches us both very closely. You see, as you’re to inherit Orange Grove, and as I’m to inherit Pimento Valley, Uncle Theodore and I think it would be a great pity that the two old estates—the estates bound up so intimately with the name and fame of the fighting Dupuys—should ever be divided or go out of the family. So we’ve agreed together, Uncle Theodore and I, that I should—well, that I should endeavour to unite them by mutual arrangement.’
‘I don’t exactly understand,’ Nora said, as yet quite unsuspicious of his real meaning.
‘Why, you know, Nora, a man can’t live upon sugar and rum alone.’
‘Certainly not,’ Nora interrupted; ‘even if he’s a confirmed drunkard, it would be quite impossible. He must have something solid occasionally to eat as well.’
‘Ah, yes,’ Tom said, in a sentimental tone, endeavouring to rise as far as he was able to the height of the occasion. ‘And he must have something more than that too, Nora: he must have sympathy; he must have affection: he must have a companion in life; he must have somebody, you know, to sit at the head of his table, and to—to—to’——
‘To pour out tea for him,’ Nora suggested blandly, filling his cup a second time.
Tom reddened a little. It wasn’t exactly the idea he wanted, and he began to have a faint undercurrent of suspicion that Nora was quietly laughing at him in her sleeve. ‘Ah, well, to pour out tea for him,’ he went on, somewhat suspiciously; ‘and to share his joys and sorrows, and his hopes and aspirations’——