talking here. If you really wish to know, you can accept the invitation which I shall send you presently, and come to Scotland."
CHAPTER XVILetitia and her escort pulled up their horses at the top of Rotten Row.
Letitia was a little out of breath, but her colour was delightful, and the slight disarrangement of her tightly coiled brown hair most becoming.
"It was dear of you, Charlie, to think of lending me a hack," she declared. "I haven't enjoyed a gallop so much for ages. When we get down to Mandeleys I am going to raid Bailey's stables. He always has some young horses."
"Want schooling a bit before they're fit to ride," Grantham observed.
"If I had been born in another walk of life," Letitia said, "I am sure horse-breaking would have been my profession. You haven't been in to see us for ages, Charles."
"You weren't particularly gracious the last time I did come," he reminded her gloomily.
"Don't be silly," she laughed. "You must have come on an irritating afternoon. I get into such a terrible tangle sometimes with my housekeeping accounts up here. You know how impossible dad is with money matters, and he leaves everything to me."
The young man cleared his throat.
"I think you've borne the burdens of the family long enough," he remarked. "I wish you'd try mine."
"You do choose the most original forms of proposal," Letitia acknowledged frankly. "As a matter of fact, I have had enough of keeping accounts. I have almost made up my mind that when I do marry, if I ever do, I will marry some one enormously wealthy, who can afford to let me have a secretary-steward as well as a housekeeper."
"You've been thinking of that fellow Thain," he muttered.
"Oh, no, I haven't!" she replied. "Mr. Thain is a very pleasant person, but I can assure you that I have never considered him matrimonially. I suppose I ought to have done," she went on, "but, you know, I am just a little old-fashioned."
"I can't see what's the matter with me," the young man said desolately. "I've a bit of my own, a screw from my job, and the governor allows me a trifle. We might work it up to ten thousand a year. We ought to be able to make a start on that."
"It is positive wealth," Letitia acknowledged, "but I am sure you don't want me really, and I haven't the least inclination to get married, and heaven knows what would happen to dad if I let him go back to bachelor apartments!""He'd take care of himself all right," Letitia's suitor observed confidently. "Would he!" she replied. "I am not at all sure. Our menkind always seem to have gone on sowing their wild oats most vigorously after middle age. Of course, if Ada Honeywell would marry him, I might feel a little easier in my mind."

"Ada won't marry any one," Grantham declared, "and I am 

 Prev. P 85/218 next