Page:The Van Roon (IA thevanroon00snaiiala).pdf/118

 "Oh no!" said William, trying to spear a pickled walnut in a glass jar.

"Then I think it's an infamous shame that the whole of that six guineas should go into the pocket of Uncle Si."

With a polite shake of the head, William dissented. "But don't you see, I couldn't have bought it unless the master had given me the money, and also marked the catalogue."

"It was your brains that bought it. And your brains sold it, too. I think you ought to see that Uncle Si is simply living upon them."

"No, no, Miss June," said William staunchly. "Please don't forget that it is the master who taught me everything."

June declined to argue the point. She knew it was no use. For the hundredth time she was up against his fixed idea. Besides, there was something else to talk about.

"To whom did you sell that beautiful bowl?" Her voice was that of the dove.

"I sold it to a Miss Babraham," said the Sawney in a voice of perfectly stupendous impersonality.

"To a Miss Who?"

She had caught the name quite clearly, and not for the first time that day, but there was a kind of morbid fascination in toying with a subject which was really without significance, and could lead nowhere. All the same she pined for an insight into the workings of the mind of this strange young man who was such a baffling mixture of the over-simple and the highly gifted.

"Her name is Miss Babraham."

"Who is she when she is at home?"