Habitat Feng Shui

She said she would come with him. He answered that it was impossible. She would be insulted by Miss Baker's crowd or reproached by Mrs. Hope, and either of these occurrences would be more than he could bear with good temper or good manners or credit to himself or her. He said he must leave her at home among the Coulscombe people, where, perhaps, when she had time, she would do some of the things that he would be compelled to leave undone. She asked him about money. Whatever it cost him to find employment for the Denbury men, he said, he had vowed not a penny should come out of the Coulscombe estate. He thought he could provide the means from other resources, which meant, as Marian knew, from his pocket money and the sum spent on the stable. Scrawled upon a sheet of note pap2r he had what he called an estimate, an unintelligible and much corrected tangle of figures, which he showed her with some diffidence. She knew not whether to laugh or cry, so pathetic an object did it seem. "Is the adventure worth so much?" she asked tenderly. The question disappointed him. "You 're not looking at it in the right way," he said. "Anything that 's worth doing at all is worth life and limb." She put away the estimate in her own pocket and made an emphatic pronouncement. Whatever the adventure might be worth as an adventure, as resolutely noble conduct it was worth all that she could offer Bobby. The labour would be his; every penny of the charges should be hers....