Now simple as this procedure appeared, it had the simplicity of genius about it, not the simplicity of the fool. As far as houses went, she did not care whether she had Lady Newgate’s house or a house in Newgate. What she was going for was Lady Newgate. It was possible, of course, that on receiving this message, Lady Newgate would simply say, ‘What on earth does she want to see me for? She can settle it through the agent.’ If that was the case, it was not likely that Lady Newgate would be any good to her. But it was quite possible that Lady Newgate might say, ‘Hullo: here is _the_ Mrs. Whitehand going about looking for a house, and probably unchaperoned.’ Anyhow there was a chance of this, and since Sarah Whitehand had nothing to lose, she took it. For there might be something to gain, and these are the best chances to take.
Now the price asked for this fortress of marble and cedar-wood was an extremely high one, and the Newgates would have been perfectly willing to take about half of the sum named, after a little genteel and lofty bargaining. Consequently the prospect of immediately obtaining the full price, not for three months only, but for six, including August and September, when an aged caretaker usually had it for nothing, was irresistibly attractive. Toby Newgate, it is true, momentarily demurred against his wife’s waiting upon the peremptory Yankee at the Ritz, but she had seen much further than him with her forget-me-not coloured eyes. She had seen in fact just as far as Mrs. Whitehand.
‘My dear, it’s flying in the face of Providence to neglect such a chance,’ she said, ‘and if she’d told me to wait at the bottle entrance of the Elephant and Castle I should have gone.’
‘Don’t like your being whistled to by the wife of the manufacturer of hardware, just for six months’ rent,’ he said.
‘My dear Toby, it isn’t only six months’ rent that’s at stake,’ she said. ‘I’m not going to be landlady only, I expect, but godmother.’
‘Yes, dear, and you godfather to Mr. Hardware, if he is here. But you needn’t buy any presents. Good American godchildren give the presents themselves.’
Toby had some vague sense of her position, she only the necessity of his poverty.
‘You mean you’re going to trot them round?’ he asked.