"Don't entangle yourself in calculations, child," Wyverne answered; "you haven't an idea how expensive hunting from other people's houses is; sending on, costs a fortune. I should like you to see my accounts for last season" (he said this with intense gravity, just as if he had kept them regularly); "I am certain I shall save two hundred a year at the lowest computation. Yes, we can do it easily. I saw Harry Conway the other day (he married that pretty Kate Carlyon two years ago); he began telling me of his rectory in Herefordshire, what a lovely garden his wife had, and how all the country admired the Welsh ponies she drove. Now, I know their income does not touch six hundred pounds. We can double that, at all events, O cousin, cautious beyond your years!" The part of Dame Prudence was in reality so entirely foreign to Miss Vavasour's nature and habits, that it amused her very much to play it, so she still tried to look solemn, but the laugh would not be dissembled in her eyes. "An Abbey is a more expensive residence than a rectory, _M. le Financier_, even if the Lady Abbess should not be enthusiastic about flower-gardens. Have you formed any plans as to our life in the North? I mean to make Mrs. Grant teach me housekeeping; and I shall be so severe about the weekly bills! I can fancy the butchers and bakers trembling when they bring up their little red books to be settled." "Certainly, _il faut vivre_; I quite admit the necessity of that. I have no doubt we shall do wonderfully well. I shall slay a good number of creatures, finned, furred, and feathered, and one does not get tired of game easily. We must not have any one to stay with us, except in the shooting-season; though I believe the chief cost of guests is the claret they drink; fortunately there is a Red Sea of that in the cellars. And now, my Helen, prepare to open your great eyes very extensively; I mean to annihilate your scruples with my last idea in economy. When the present stock is exhausted (it's not large) the supply of champagne at the Abbey will be cut off until I come into another inheritance." He enunciated the words rather sententiously and solemnly, evidently feeling the confidence and self-satisfaction that might be pardonable in a Chancellor of the Exchequer who has thought of a new and productive tax that cannot possibly hurt or offend anybody, or in a calculator who has elaborated a scheme for materially reducing the national debt. This time Miss Vavasour's musical laugh was not repressed. "Don't go any further, Alan; Prudence owns herself vanquished by that last tremendous retrenchment. I begin to think we shall manage perfectly; perhaps there is no danger of absolute penury. Whenever I find the larder is empty, and that there are no means of filling it, I shall bring in the Spur in the Dish with my own hands; you were born near enough the Border to know, then, that you and your lances must go out on the foray."