"Niece," he began the moment his cup had been handed to him, "kindly tell me what you mean by gallivanting about London."
A hot flame of resentment ran in June's cheek. But she was too proud to express it otherwise than by rather elaborately holding her peace. She continued to pour out tea just as if not a word had been said on the subject.
"It's my fault, sir," said William, stepping into the breach chivalrously, but with an absence of tact. "Miss June very kindly consented to come and look at the Van Roon."
"There must be no more of it." Miss June received the full benefit of a north eye. "I will not have you going about with a young man, least of all a young man earning fifteen shillings a week in my employ."
It was now the turn of William's cheek to feel the flame, but it was not in his nature to fight over a thing of that kind, even had he been in a position to do so. Besides, it hardly needed his master to tell him that he had been guilty of presumption.
Indeed, the circumstances of the case made it almost impossible for either of the culprits to defend such conduct in the other's presence. Yet June, to the intense astonishment of Uncle Si, and no doubt to her own, contrived to give battle in hostile territory.
"I can only say," she remarked, with a fearlessness so amazing that Uncle Si scalded his mouth by drinking out of his cup instead of out of his saucer, "that if fifteen shillings a week is all that William gets, it is just about time he had a rise in his wages."
For a moment Uncle Si could only splutter. Then he took off his spectacles and wiped them fiercely.
