“Yessir.”

“You are a young woman—­not a baby.  Strive to grasp what I am going to tell you.”

“Yessir,” in a half sob, that vibrated with the obstinate resentment of a child that knows it is to be argued out of its instincts by adult sophistry.  What had become of her passive personality?

“You are now the owner of two and a half million dollars—­that is about five hundred thousand pounds.  Five—­hundred thousand—­pounds.  Think of ten sovereigns—­ten golden sovereigns like that Mrs. Leadbatter gave you.  Then ten times as much as that, and ten times as much as all that”—­he spread his arms wider and wider—­“and ten times as much as all that, and then”—­here his arms were prematurely horizontal, so he concluded hastily but impressively,—­“and then FIFTY times as much as all that.  Do you understand how rich you are?”

“Yessir.”  She was fumbling nervously at her gloves, half drawing them off.

“Now all this money will last forever.  For you invest it—­if only at three per cent.—­never mind what that is—­and then you get fifteen thousand a year—­fifteen thousand golden sovereigns to spend every—­”

“Please, sir, I must go now.  Rosie!”

“Oh, but you can’t go yet.  I have lots more to tell you.”

“Yessir; but can’t you ring for me again?”

In the gravity of the crisis, the remark tickled him; he laughed with a strange ring in his laughter.

“All right; run away, you sly little puss.”

He smiled on as he poured out his tea; finding a relief in prolonging his sense of the humour of the suggestion, but his heart was heavy, and his brain a-whirl.  He did not ring again till he had finished tea.

She came in, and took her gloves out of her pocket.

“No! no!” he cried, strangely exasperated.  “An end to this farce!  Put them away.  You don’t need gloves any more.”

She squeezed them into her pocket nervously, and began to clear away the things, with abrupt movements, looking askance every now and then at the overcast handsome face.

At last he nerved himself to the task and said:  “Well, as I was saying, Mary Ann, the first thing for you to think of is to make sure of all this money—­this fifteen thousand pounds a year.  You see you will be able to live in a fine manor house—­such as the squire lived in in your village—­surrounded by a lovely park with a lake in it for swans and boats—­”

Mary Ann had paused in her work, slop-basin in hand.  The concrete details were beginning to take hold of her imagination.

“Oh, but I should like a farm better,” she said.  “A large farm with great pastures and ever so many cows and pigs and outhouses, and a—­oh, just like Atkinson’s farm.  And meat every day, with pudding on Sundays!  Oh, if father was alive, wouldn’t he be glad!”

“Yes, you can have a farm—­anything you like.”

“Oh, how lovely!  A piano?”