"Is this an expensive boardin'-place?" Lovina Nixon enquired, as she and her husband followed Daisy up the steps.
"Oh—not very," Daisy answered, as she swung open the door and ushered her parents into the quietly furnished hall, with its deep, soft rugs, polished floor, and walnut hat-rack. A door on the right led into the library; and through this Daisy, after depositing the mother's valise in the hall, led the fumbling man and woman. The room was empty, as Lady Frances was in the kitchen, overseeing, after her thrifty fashion, the supper preparations, and Sir William was not yet home from the office.
"Queer kind of a hotel." Lovina Nixon's eyes followed her daughter suspiciously, as Daisy went to the centre-table and opened a massive volume with brass binding and buckle.
"Come on, mother, and register!" said the girl then, with a queer expression; pointing down to the opened page, and regarding the sharp-nosed ill-expectant woman with eyes that were bright and flashing as live fire.
Lovina Nixon advanced; felt for her glasses; put them on; bent over; and, in the big family Bible that Daisy had laid open, read the record of the marriage of her daughter to Sir William Ware, Baronet.
CHAPTER XIX. The Choice of the Dray.
Sir William sat in the drawing-room, playing the host to John Nixon.
As Nixon had his feet propped up on the back of a chair in front of him, Sir William, in order to put his guest thoroughly at his ease, secured a chair and cocked his feet up in the air, too. And, in order that Nixon might not he embarrassed by suddenly finding out that he was the only one who was spitting copiously on the tiles in front of the fireplace, Sir William also occasionally contributed a light expectoration in that locality. Spitting had been a yet unlearned accomplishment with Ware; but, by watching John Nixon, who was a pastmaster, the baronet learned, in the course of half an hour or so, to hit the centre of the tiling with a fair degree of accuracy, and without leaning forward in his chair.