Part 32

“Oh, I did know something,” his daughter pleaded; “for I saw her yesterday at Bellborough.”

Mr. Prodmore contested even this freedom. “And what was she doing at Bellborough?”

“Staying at the Blue Dragon, to see the old abbey. She says she just loves old abbeys. It seems to be the same feeling,” the girl went on, “that brought her over, today, to see this old house.”

“She ‘just loves’ old houses? Then why the deuce didn’t she accompany you properly, since she is so pushing, to the door?”

“Because she went off in a fly,” Cora explained, “to see, first, the old hospital. She just loves old hospitals. She asked me if this isn’t a show-house. I told her”--the girl was anxious to disclaim responsibility--“that I hadn’t the least idea.”

“It is!” Mr. Prodmore cried almost with ferocity. “I wonder, on such a speech, what she thought of you!”

Miss Prodmore meditated with distinct humbleness. “I know. She told me.”

He had looked her up and down. “That you’re really a hopeless frump?”

Cora, oddly enough, seemed almost to court this description. “That I’m not, as she rather funnily called it, a show-girl.”

“Think of your having to be reminded--by the very strangers you pick up,” Mr. Prodmore groaned, “of what my daughter should pre-eminently be! Your friend, all the same,” he bethought himself, “is evidently loud.”

“Well, when she comes,” the girl again so far agreed as to reply, “you’ll certainly hear her. But don’t judge her, papa, till you do. She’s tremendously clever,” she risked--“there seems to be nothing she doesn’t know.”

“And there seems to be nothing you do! You’re not tremendously clever,” Mr. Prodmore pursued; “so you’ll permit me to demand of you a slight effort of intelligence.” Then, as for the benefit of the listening walls themselves, he struck the high note. “I’m expecting Captain Yule.”

Cora’s consciousness blinked. “The owner of this property?”

Her father’s tone showed his reserves. “That’s what it depends on you to make him!”

“On me?” the girl gasped.

“He came into it three months ago by the death of his great-uncle, who had lived to ninety-three, but who, having quarrelled mortally with his father, had always refused to receive either sire or son.”

Our young lady bent her eyes on this page of family history, then raised them but dimly lighted. “But now, at least, doesn’t he live here?”

“So little,” her companion replied, “that he comes here today for the very first time. I’ve some business to discuss with him that can best be discussed on this spot; and it’s a vital part of that business that you too should take pains to make him welcome.”

Miss Prodmore failed to ignite. “In his own house?”

“That it’s not his own house is just the point I seek to make! The way I look at it is that it’s my house! The way I look at it even, my dear”--in his demonstration of his ways of looking Mr. Prodmore literally expanded--“is that it’s our house. The whole thing is mortgaged, as it stands, for every penny of its value; and I’m in the pleasant position--do you follow me?” he trumpeted.

Cora jumped. “Of holding the mortgages?”

He caught her with a smile of approval and indeed of surprise. “You keep up with me better than I hoped. I hold every scrap of paper, and it’s a precious collection.”

She smothered, perceptibly, a vague female sigh, glancing over the place more attentively than she had yet done. “Do you mean that you can come down on him?”

“I don’t need to ‘come,’ my dear--I am ‘down.’ This is down!”--and the iron point of Mr. Prodmore’s stick fairly struck, as he rapped it, a spark from the cold pavement. “I came many weeks ago--commercially speaking--and haven’t since budged from the place.”

The girl moved a little about the hall, then turned with a spasm of courage. “Are you going to be very hard?”

If she read the eyes with which he met her she found in them, in spite of a certain accompanying show of pleasantry, her answer. “Hard with you?”

“No--that doesn’t matter. Hard with the Captain.”

Mr. Prodmore thought an instant. “‘Hard’ is a stupid, shuffling term. What do you mean by it?”