Her frankness was alarming, but Jimmy Baker rather liked it. “When I’m forty or so,” he admitted.
“How old are you now?” She asked the question without looking up from her salad.
“Twenty-three.”
“I’m twenty-two,” said she. “Uncle Walter died and left me a thousand, and so I thought I’d come to England and have a good time. I’m going to be a school teacher when it’s over. I’ve been to college. When you’ve been to college you can do without a chaperon, and I’d nobody to go with me and nobody to ask. Father’s married again, and I don’t remember mother. I was a baby when she died. You got any folks?”
Baker had everything and everybody. His father farmed near Bideford; his mother and sisters looked after the dairy; his brothers were at school or in positions similar to his own.
“What do they give you at the bank?” she asked.
He named the figure of his meagre salary.
“My! you’re not going on working for that!”
“I have to,” he answered.
“Well, it’s no business of mine;” and now she rang for the landlady and introduced Mr. Baker as a guest who was staying to supper.