“I was brought up to them, you see,” Oscar would answer with a smile and a sigh. “I used to help my father, and I have been used to land from babyhood. I am much more at home still with a steward’s books than with the office accounts!”
“Well, I wish your uncle would make you his man of business when he comes back,” said Mrs. Cossart one day, after Oscar had helped her through some accounts which had often been a source of bewilderment to herself and her husband. “I believe we get imposed upon right and left through ignorance. And I don’t like the thought of your going back to that nasty stuffy office. You would be much better for an open-air life, and I always do say that John is getting too old to look after all the land he buys, and that he ought to have a regular agent.”
Oscar laughed and stroked his aunt’s hand caressingly.
“Quite too halcyon an idea to work,” he said, “but I like to think that I am helping you in his absence.”
“You are more than helping—you are doing everything, and I’m sure I’m thankful for it, for I never could understand the rights of things between landlord and tenant, and we want to do what is right and just without being imposed upon. Well, you will stay on, at any rate, till your uncle comes back, and he seems in no hurry to do so. I wonder he wasn’t as glad to come home as I was; but perhaps he knew there’d be a lot of worries waiting for him. He will be very glad to find them all straightened out like this.”
It seemed as though some idea was fermenting in Mrs. Cossart’s brain, for once when she was sitting alone with Sheila in the drawing-room she said suddenly—
“Do you ever hear from the Dumaresqs now?”
“Lady Dumaresq wrote once, and Miss Adene once. They are soon coming back to England.”
“Do you think you will see any more of them when they do?”
“I don’t know,” answered Sheila in a low voice, with crimsoning cheeks.