“Oh, my people have been in town. You know what that means.”
“Indeed I don’t! Your people? You mean your father and mother?”
“Stepmother, if you please,” Yootha corrected. “For goodness’ sake don’t insult my mother’s memory. Yes, they both came up unexpectedly, and for what do you think?”
“I give it up.”
“To try to persuade me to go home!” and Yootha laughed merrily. “Can you see me back in the old homestead with its memories of my happy childhood’s days, and by contrast the atmosphere which prevails there now? No, thank you! And why do you think they wanted me back again, Cora?”
“Oh, stop asking conundrums.”
“Because some busybody has been telling my father that the way I live in my bachelor flat is not comme il faut, if you please, and so he thinks—or says he thinks—that I may end by bringing the family name into disrepute. Just think of that! Now, if you ask me, I will tell you what I believe the true reason is. On my twenty-fifth birthday I come into some money from a defunct aunt, my father’s only sister—quite a nice little sum safely invested—and I am pretty sure my stepmother hopes to induce me to make over a portion of the nest egg to her, or to my father. You have no idea how amiable she was, and my father too. Couldn’t make enough of me or do too much for me. The money comes to me in five months’ time.”
“But didn’t they know before that you would inherit it?”
“Apparently not. I knew nothing about it myself until a few weeks ago, and I purposely didn’t tell you then because the lawyer who wrote to me—he is a friend of mine—asked me to say nothing about it just yet. He told me about it more or less in confidence—said he thought I might like to know.”
“So you are not going back to Cumberland?”