Part 6 (1/2)
”There's my little fortune, Tony,” she said, when once or twice he tried to check the leap of her antic.i.p.ations; ”that will provide the capital.”
”I knew you would offer it,” Tony replied simply. ”Your help will shorten our separation by a good deal. So I'll take half.”
”All!” cried Millie.
”And what would you do when you wanted a new frock?” asked Tony, with a smile.
Millie shrugged her shoulders.
”I shall join you so soon,” she said.
It dawned upon Tony that she was making too little of the burden which she would be called upon to bear--the burden of dull lonely months in that great shabby house.
”It will be a little while before I can send for you, Millie,” he protested. But she paid no heed to the protest. She fetched her bank book and added up the figures.
”I have three thousand pounds,” she said.
”I'll borrow half,” he repeated. ”Of course, I am only borrowing.
Should things go wrong with me, you are sure to get it back in the end.”
They drove down to Millie's bank the next morning, and fifteen hundred pounds were transferred to his account.
”Meanwhile,” said Tony, as they came out of the door into Pall Mall, ”we have not yet settled where our farm is to be. I think I will go and see Chase.”
”The man in Stepney Green?” Millie asked.
”Yes. He's the man to help us.”
Tony called a cab and drove off. It was late in the afternoon when he returned, and he had no opportunity to tell his wife the results of his visit before dinner was announced. Millie was in a fever to hear his news. Never, even in this house, had an evening seemed so long.
Sir John sat upright in his high-backed chair, and, as was his custom, bade her read aloud the evening paper. But that task was beyond her.
She pleaded a headache and escaped. It seemed to her that hours pa.s.sed before Tony rejoined her. She had come to dread with an intense fear that some hindrance would, at any moment, stop their plan.
”Well?” she asked eagerly, when Tony at last came into their sitting-room.
”It's to be horses in Kentucky,” answered Tony. ”Farming wants more knowledge and a long apprentices.h.i.+p; but I know a little about horses.”
”Splendid!” cried Millie. ”You will go soon?”
”In a week. A week is all I need.”
Millie was quiet for a little while. Then she asked, with an anxious look--
”When do you mean to tell your father?”
”To-morrow.”
”Don't,” said she. She saw his face cloud, she was well aware of his dislike of secrecies, but she was too much afraid that, somehow, at the last moment an insuperable obstacle would bar the way. ”Don't tell him at all,” she went on. ”Leave a note for him. I will see that it is given to him after you have gone. Then he can't stop you. Please do this, I ask you.”