14
June, preparing for dinner a Yorkshire pudding, brought an acute mind to bear on the still graver problem before it. What would happen when Uncle Si found out that William had been persuaded to give her the picture? It was a question she was bound to ask, yet she dare not foretell the answer. William and she were completely in his power. Wholly dependent upon the food and lodging the old man provided and the few shillings a week with which he grudgingly supplemented them, they could not afford to come to an open breach with him; at the same time to June’s practical mind, it would be an act of sheer madness to give up the rare thing that fortune had put into their hands.
Her need just then was the advice of some able and disinterested friend. There was only her power of putting two and
