looked at me doubtfully.

“That seems scarcely fair—to you. It means paying out your own money on things, that—well! I thought that would obviously come out as ‘business expenses.’”

I said, feeling miserably uncomfortable, “Don’t you see that I can’t possibly allow you to pay for—to give me frocks?”

“But—don’t you understand that—in the way of business, you will have to allow me to give you other things?”

“Other things? What?”

“Why, presents. I don’t know what, exactly. You will probably have to come round the shops with me yourself, and tell me. You are the best judge of what a girl would like to show, as gifts, keepsakes, what-nots, from the man to whom she is, presumably, engaged. It is part of this affair!” explained Mr. Waters, a little impatiently, as the taxi was held up at a crossing and waited panting for the signal to get on. “It would ‘look odd,’ as you[63] yourself expressed it once, if I did not offer you presents.”

[63]

“Presents,” I said, feeling really indignant with him for being so obtuse, “are very different. For one thing, I should not have to keep them always. They would go back to you at the end of the year, as soon as that paper I signed for you is torn up. But—girls don’t take clothes as presents, ever!”

“I don’t see why not,” he said obstinately. “Besides—don’t they! A cousin of my own, a girl” (fancy his having a girl-cousin!) “who was staying with us last winter used to wear a magnificent stole and a muff of leopard-skin—the leopards had been shot by her fiancé.”

“Those were furs,” I explained. “Furs are different.”

“A great many things would seem to be ‘different’ from what I imagined,” he said, in a tone of voice that was almost petulant. I felt inclined to say, “Yes! You imagined that because you’re as infallible as a tape-machine in business-hours, you can’t make mistakes outside the office!”

Whereas Sydney Vandeleur, who has no “business” outside his amateur art criticism, with an occasional design for hand-wrought jewellery, would never have made the faux pas this man had done. It was so absurdly ignorant[64] and gauche of him not to see it. And even now he seemed inclined to dispute the point.

[64]

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