A Country Wooing by Joan Smith Page A

into town and roll your eyes at one of them.”
    “The younger ain’t half bad,” Robin said with a quizzing smile.
    “What’s her dot?” Alex asked.
    “Why, for a minor lord who will one day possibly own a heavily mortgaged and dilapidated farm, I expect he’d hand over a million or so,” Anne said.
    “No, for that price he’d expect me to take the elder antidote off his hands,” Robin said, laughing.
    Alex looked from one to the other as they joked. “It’s gratifying to see such high spirits in these troubled times.”
    “It’s breeding that accounts for it,” Robin said.
    “We laugh in the face of adversity and pretend to enjoy wearing threadbare clothes,” Anne told him. “Anyone with a new bonnet each season is considered a parvenu. Mind you, there aren’t many such low types hereabouts. There’s scarcely a jacket in the village with any nap left on it.”
    “Barring the merchants,” Alex added.
    “Well, I don’t enjoy wearing boots three years old, and I’m sorry to hear you’ve given up cobbling, Annie,” Robin said. “I was hoping you’d tack a new half sole on my top boots. The soles are so thin I can tell when I step on a coin whether it’s heads or tails.”
    “Never mind whether it’s heads or tails. Just bend over and put it in your pocket,” Alex urged.
    Anne turned to Alex. “You were going to alleviate some of the problems by selling your brother’s jewelry. Have you done it?”
    “No, Rob and I have sorted through it and have a load ready to take to Winchester. I ought to go to London, but we’ll get a fair price in Winchester. We’ll take it over tomorrow. Till I have some gold to disburse, I daren’t show my face in Eastleigh.”
    “You never saw such gimcrack stuff, Annie,” Robin said. “A gold toothpick, for instance. Now, why the deuce would anyone want a gold toothpick?”
    “Just what I always wanted!” she exclaimed, laughing. Despite the nature of their conversation, she suddenly felt happy. It was having friends to share troubles that made them tolerable. “You must own that it would be the height of elegance to pull out a gold toothpick after our dinner of purloined eggs.”
    “And he had forty-five snuffboxes,” Robin continued, eager to relate the list.
    “That sounds a trifle excessive. I should think thirty would be enough. One for every day of the month. Especially when one considers that Charles hardly ever took snuff.”
    “Eleven watches—one of them a dandy Breguet. Sixteen fobs, some of them quite valuable. Gold and jeweled, and the tiepins!”
    “Forty-five?” Anne asked. “To match the snuffboxes, I mean.”
    “Not quite. Thirty, we counted.”
    “He was trying to economize, poor fellow.”
    “Oh, as to that, they are the most valuable pieces in the bunch. If they’re genuine, that is. I cannot think the emerald is real, but two of the diamonds certainly are. One of them must be five or six carats, and there’s a black pearl.”
    “You’ll have to clean it up before you sell it,” Anne advised.
    “No, it’s supposed to be black.”
    Alex listened to their nonsense and finally spoke. “She’s pulling your leg, greenhorn.”
    “I never pull a gentleman’s leg,” Anne retaliated. “It sounds excessively vulgar. Have I not just been telling you what a pattern-card of breeding I am?”
    “Sorry to hear it.” Robin sighed. “I was counting on you to fix up these boots of mine.”
    “If you have no objection to tacks sticking in your toes, leave them with me. The charge will be nominal, for a friend.”
    “I’ll tell you what I will do, if you don’t mind, Alex,” Robin said, “is get into Charlie’s closets and dig myself out a new pair. He has dozens of them, and we are about the same size.”
    “We shall be paying for them, no doubt,” Alex replied. “You must certainly feel free to wear them or anything else that fits you.”
    “I thought maybe you’d want them yourself,” Robin said. “They’d be