"You'll find me, in particular, very grasping," she declared, as they
entered the long, low hall.  "I want to make everything I can out of
you, so that daddy and I can have a real good two months in London.  I
don't believe you know the value of things a bit, do you--except of
railways and those colossal things?  Cupboards, for instance?  Do you
know anything about cupboards?  And are you going to allow us anything
for the extra bathroom we put in?"

"Well, I am rather partial to bathrooms," he confessed, "and I should
hate you to take it away with you."

She drew a sigh of relief.

"So long as you look upon the bathroom matter reasonably, I am quite
sure we shan't quarrel.  Tell me about Lady Letitia, please?  Is she
quite well--and the Marquis and all of them?  And when are they coming
down?"

"They are quite well," he told her, "and Lady Letitia sent you her
love.  They talk of coming down almost at once."

"I do hope they will," she replied, "because when we leave here dad and
I are going to stay for a week or so with some friends quite near.
There!  Did you hear that noise?  That's daddy stamping because he is
getting impatient."

"Then perhaps--" David suggested.

"I suppose we'd better," she interrupted.  "Be lenient about the
bathroom, please.  And if you could manage not to notice that the
dining room wants papering, you'd be an angel.  This way."

CHAPTER XIX

David proved himself such a very satisfactory incoming tenant that the
Colonel insisted upon his staying to lunch and hastened off into the
cellar to find a bottle of old Marsala, of which he proposed that they
should partake with a dry biscuit before Mr. Merridrew's departure.

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