"I wonder you can dare to say it! I haven't had a penny from you, for a week. I hadn't even the half-crown to buy the child the new paint-box he wrote for."
"Henry? Does he want a paint-box? He shall have it, poor little chap. I will see about it tomorrow."
"Once he's gone to the office, don't you see him any more, all day?" Auntie asked, as the front door closed on the master of the house, next morning.
"Not till dinner. He has a biscuit for his lunch, or goes without it. He isn't a man to care for food at any time."
"No. He isn't what I call a restful man," Auntie said, and spread herself more at her ease in her chair. "He isn't one, I should say, to enjoy the comforts of home."
"Oh, as for that, I don't care for a man always in your way among the chairs and tables," Mrs Mellish said. "Gussie isn't a woman's man, you see, Auntie. He's about as clever as they're made, Gussie is; and when they're like that they're _men's_ men; and I like them better so."
Grace's red cheeks were redder. She was a quick-tempered, high-spirited young woman. "Hands off! he's mine," her manner, more than her words, said to Auntie, who would have liked to listen to a few wifely confidences as she and her niece sat _tête-à-tête_ through the long morning.
They lived in a provincial town, and on the second night of Auntie's stay they went to the theatre, at which a London company happened to be performing.
Grace loved the play, and was in high spirits, making an extra toilette for the occasion. She was not half through it when her husband, who had hurried over his dressing, left her and went downstairs. He had heard Auntie, who was always too early for everything, and made a merit of it, leave her room. He found her in the drawing-room, pulling a pair of long white gloves over her large hands and arms.
"I have been stupid enough to leave myself short of cash," Mellish said, beginning lightly at once, almost before he had closed the door behind him. "I wonder if you could oblige me, Auntie, with a few pounds for a couple of days? Say ten or fifteen? Just to carry me on till my money-ship comes in."
Auntie, working on her tight gloves, looked at him; his tone was carefully careless, but his face, which she had called chalk-white, was surely whiter yet. His question being asked, his lips still moved.