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“I think you’ll find there’s everything.” Prodmore looked at his watch. “Which will you take first? The young lady or the house?”
Yule started. “Do you mean your daughter’s here?”
Prodmore glowed. “In the morning-room.”
“Waiting for me?”
“As long, you know, as you like!”
Yule’s alarm was not assuaged. “Let her remain so! I’ll first take the house.”
“Shall I go round with you?”
“I’d rather, on the whole, go round alone.”
Chivers returned at this moment from the morning-room, looking with limpid earnestness from one to the other. “There’s tea on, sir!” he persuasively jerked to the younger man.
Prodmore answered. “Then I’ll join my daughter.” He gained the door, repeating with a proud gesture—the offering of a flower of his own raising—his happy formula: “The rose on its stem!” And so passed out.
Chivers, settling some small object, was suddenly addressed by Yule. “I say, my friend, what colour is the rose?”
The old man turned to the open door. “Rather a brilliant—”
“A brilliant?”
“Kind of old-fashioned red.” His smile went out. “It’s the only one left—on the old west wall.”
Yule laughed. “I’m not alluding to the garden, but to the young lady at present in the morning-room. Do you happen to have noticed if she’s pretty?”
Chivers stood queerly rueful. “Laws, sir—it’s a matter I mostly notice; but isn’t it a matter—of taste?”
“Pre-eminently. That’s why I appeal to yours.”
The old man flushed. “Mine was always a sort of fancy for something more merry-like.”
“She isn’t merry-like, poor Miss Prodmore?” But Yule’s attention dropped before the answer came. “What are you? To whom do you belong?”
“If you could just only tell me, sir! I quite seem to waste away—for someone to take an order of.”
“Who pays your wages?”
“No one at all, sir,” said the old man simply.
Yule, fumbling in a waistcoat pocket, produced a coin which his hand placed in shy practical relation to Chivers. “Then there’s a sovereign. And I haven’t many!”
The old man studied him. “Ah, then, shouldn’t it stay in the family?”
Yule wheeled round, struck, then touched. “I think it does, old boy.”
“I’ve served your house, sir.”
“How long?”
“All my life.”
For a time they faced each other. “Then I won’t give you up!” Yule said at last.
“Indeed, sir, I hope you won’t give up anything.”
“It remains to be seen.” He looked toward the open door. “Is that the garden?”
“It was!” Chivers sighed.
“Shall I show you how it used to be?”
“It’s just as it is, alas, that I happen to require it!” Yule reached the door. “Don’t come—I want to think.” And he walked out.
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