Tussie offered him a cigarette.

“My dear Tussie,” said his mother quickly, “we will not keep Mr. Neumann-Schultz.  I’m sure his time must be quite as valuable as mine is.”

“Oh madam,” said Fritzing with a vast politeness, settling himself yet more firmly in his chair, “nothing of mine can possibly be of the same value as anything of yours.”

Lady Shuttleworth stared—­she had stared a good deal during the last halfhour—­then began to laugh, and got up.  “If you see its value so clearly,” she said, “I’m sure you won’t care to take up any more of it.”

“Nay, madam,” said Fritzing, forced to get up too, “I am here, as I explained, in your own interests—­or rather in those of your son, who I hear is shortly to attain his majority.  This young gentleman is, I take it, your son?”

Tussie assented.

“And therefore the owner of the cottages?”

“What cottages?” asked Tussie, eagerly.  He was manifestly so violently interested in Mr. Neumann-Schultz that his mother could only gaze at him in wonder.  He actually seemed to hang on that odd person’s lips.

“My dear Tussie, Mr. Neumann-Schultz has been trying to persuade me to sell him the pair of cottages up by the church, and I have been trying to persuade him to believe me when I tell him I won’t.”

“But why won’t you, mother?” asked Tussie.

Lady Shuttleworth stared at him in astonishment.  “Why won’t I?  Do I ever sell cottages?”

“Your esteemed parent’s reasons for refusing,” said Fritzing, “reasons which she has given me with a brevity altogether unusual in one of her sex and which I cannot sufficiently commend, do more credit, as was to be expected in a lady, to her heart than to her head.  I have offered to build two new houses for the disturbed inhabitants of these.  I have offered to give her any price—­any price at all, within the limits of reason.  Your interests, young gentleman, are what will suffer if this business is not concluded between us.”

“Do you want them for yourself?” asked Tussie.

“Yes, sir, for myself and for my niece.”

“Mother, why do you refuse to do a little business?”

“Tussie, are we so poor?”

“As far as I’m concerned,” said Tussie airily to Fritzing, “you may have the things and welcome.”

“Tussie?”

“But they are not worth more than about fifty pounds apiece, and I advise you not to give more for them than they’re worth.  Aren’t they very small, though?  Isn’t there any other place here you’d rather have?”

“Tussie?”

“Do you mind telling me why you want them?”

“Young man, to live in them.”

“And where are the people to live who are in them now?” asked Lady Shuttleworth, greatly incensed.

“Madam, I promised you to build.”

“Oh nonsense.  I won’t have new red-brick horrors about the place.  There’s that nice good old Mrs. Shaw in one, so clean and tidy always, and the shoemaker, a very good man except for his enormous family, in the other.  I will not turn them out.”