"Very well." Sally's voice was harder and colder. "As you like. You are not to take any steps whatever, even to reveal your existence to my mother and Charlie. Charlie is not to be allowed to play at your house—not to be allowed to enter it."
"But, Sally, I may be unable to prevent that," he protested. "The house is not mine. I am only—only an employé and an underling. I will do what I can, but there is no use in promising what I can't perform."
Sally smiled a little. It was something new for him to stick at promising.
"Those are the conditions which I must make in self-defense," she said.
"May I venture to ask what is offered on the other side?"
She made a rapid calculation. "The most that I can offer you is seven hundred a year. I'd like to make it a thousand; but I have mother and Charlie to take care of, and I must pay Patty what she had let him have—without my knowledge," she added apologetically. "I agree to send you sixty dollars a month on those conditions."
He was leaning back in his chair and spoke in his old manner, lightly.
"And if the conditions are violated?"
"The allowance stops," Sally replied promptly.
"And further?"