Canon Spratte was thunderstruck. This was rebellion, and instinctively he felt that nothing could be done with Winnie by direct contradiction. But he was too angry to devise any better way. He walked up and down indignantly.
“And this is the return I get for all the affection I have lavished upon my children,” he said, speaking to no one in particular. “I’ve sacrificed myself to their every whim for years—and this is my reward.”
Half afraid that he was beaten, Canon Spratte flung himself petulantly in a chair. As with his father before him, outspoken opposition dismayed and perhaps intimidated him; he was unused to it, and when thwarted, could not for a while think how to conduct himself. Through the conservation Lady Sophia had kept very quiet, and her calmness added to the Canon’s irritation. He gave her one or two angry glances, but could hit upon nothing wherewith to vent on her his increasing choler.
“And do you know anything about this young man, Winnie?” she asked now. “Has he anything to live on?”
Winnie turned to her for comfort, thinking the worst of the struggle was over.
“We shall work hard, both of us,” she said. “With what he earns and the little I have from my mother we can live like kings.”
“In a flat at West Kensington, I suppose, or in a villa at Hornsey Rise,” said Canon Spratte, with an angry laugh.
“With the man I love I’d live in a hovel,” said Winnie, proudly.
Lady Sophia quietly smiled.
“Of course, it’s a delicate question with that kind of person,” she murmured. “But had he a father, or did he just grow?”