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what have you spent the thousand on?” Lina asked sharply.
    “Why, our honeymoon, sweetheart. As a matter of fact, I thought I’d done rather well. I didn’t expect anything over by the time we got back, but there was enough to keep us for six weeks into the bargain.”
    “I think,” said Lina slowly, “you must be mad.” To her Scotch mind there was something almost blasphemous in pouring out money like that – and borrowed money!
    Johnnie jumped to his feet, looking just like a guilty but not very penitent schoolboy, and came over to her chair. “My little monkeyface, it was the sanest thing I ever did in my life, to marry you. I shouldn’t wonder if it wasn’t the only sane thing. You couldn’t grudge me a bit of a splash to celebrate it.”
    He bent down, but Lina turned her face away. “No, Johnnie. No, I don’t want you to kiss me. I’m upset. I didn’t think even you could be so silly. No, Johnnie, don’t, please.” Johnnie had dropped on his knees beside her chair and put his arms round her.
    But for once he had lost his power to charm; and when the maid came in for the coffee tray a few moments later, causing him to jump hurriedly to his feet, the thread of his persuasiveness was definitely broken.
    Almost before the door was safely closed Lina had burst out, as if it had only needed the interruption to bring her resentment to full pitch.
    “Well, what do you propose to do? You can’t leave things like this. We’ve got to live, I suppose.” It was almost incredible to her that Johnnie could have plunged into marriage without any income at all, or any prospect of making one.
    “What about your father?” Johnnie said hopefully. “He could easily make you a bigger allowance, if he wanted to.”
    “He wouldn’t want to. And I shouldn’t dream of asking him.” Lina could well imagine what General McLaidlaw’s reply would be to such a request, and pride would never have allowed her to hear it. She looked with distrustful resentment at Johnnie, all her parents’ hints and warnings sounding again in her ears. “Besides,” she added tartly, “you wouldn’t want to live on your wife’s allowance, would you? At least, I hope not.”
    “No, darling, of course not,” Johnnie said quickly, though to Lina’s suspicious ears his tone was not altogether one of conviction. He scratched his curly head, looking at her with comical perplexity. “Well, I expect if the worst comes to the worst I can always borrow a spot somewhere. As a matter of fact, I’ve never touched old Middleham yet. I know,” he went on with enthusiasm. “I’ll take the car and run over to-morrow morning to Abbot Monckford. It’s only about sixty miles. Old Middleham ought to be good for a month or two’s housekeeping. Dash it, he’s a cousin; and what’s the use of a cousin if you can’t touch him occasionally? You’d better come too, and we’ll take a lunch off them.”
    Lina looked at her husband with angry exasperation. “No! I don’t know what sort of a life you’ve led up to now, my lad, but you needn’t think you’re going on with it. I’m not accustomed to living in this haphazard way, and I’m not going to begin now. You’ve got to pull yourself together. There’s going to be no more borrowing.” It was the first time in her relations with him that Lina had ever taken a decision that was opposed to Johnnie’s. It marked the beginning of a new era, had either of them realized it.
    Johnnie, who had never heard his wife address him in such a tone before, looked mildly astonished. “But what else is there to do?”
    The new responsibility that had been forming in Lina for the last twenty minutes came suddenly to birth in another burst of irritation. In face of such fecklessness, she must have responsibility for two. For the first time she was fully conscious of being the elder of the two of them; and not merely by one year, but by all the difference between an adult and a silly, irritating