“Good business!” said my Aunt. “Let me see? How much has she rooked him?”
“Please don’t ask me to do sums,” said I. “Besides, George has a perfect right to do as he pleases with his own money!”
George paid cheerfully, and then asked for some cards with cats on them.
“Whatever do you want them for?” asked Irene. (He never lets me say whatever.)
“To send to my children.”
“Ah, yes, your sweet children! Where are they?” she asked.
“In the nursery,” was George’s answer, as if he cared whether we were in the copper or the stockpot! It saved him from having to say Whitby, however.
“And now,” she said, “do me a great kindness. Buy me your last great book.”
“There ought to be some of my work here,” George replied gravely, and made a move in our direction, where Mrs. Truelove was. Mrs. Truelove sings in the choir at the Church upon the Hill, and so loud she would bring the roof off nearly, but in her own shop she is as mild as a lamb. George asked her for Dewlaps (of which the heroine is a Tuscan cow), and The Pretty Lady, of which Lady Scilly is the heroine, and The Light that was on Land and Sea, and Simple Simon, of which the hero really was a pieman, only an Italian one. Poor Mrs. Truelove looked blank.
“I am afraid, Sir, we do not stock them, but I can order——”