It also struck her as a little odd that a gentleman should propose to accompany a lady when she was going on domestic errands; but then this gentleman was different from any she had known, and there were many ways of the world with which she was not at all acquainted. Mr. Burke immediately began to speak of the visit of the day before. He had enjoyed seeing Mrs. Cliff again and he had never sat down to a better dinner. "Yes," said Willy, "she likes good eatin', and she knows what it is, and if she had a bigger dining-room she would often invite people to dinner, and I expect the house would be quite lively, as she seems more given to company than she used to be, and that's all right, considerin' she's better able to afford it." Mr. Burke took a deep satisfied breath. The opportunity had already come to him to speak his mind. "Afford it!" said he. "I should think so! Mrs. Cliff must be very rich. She is worth, I should say--well, I don't know what to say, not knowing exactly and precisely what each person got when the grand division was made." Willy's loyalty to Mrs. Cliff prompted her to put her in as good a light as possible before this man of the world, and her own self-esteem prompted her to show that, being a friend and relative of this rich lady, she was not ignorant of her affairs in life. "Oh, she's rich!" said Willy. "I can't say, of course, just how much she has, but I'm quite sure that she owns at least--" Willy wished to put the amount of the fortune at one hundred thousand dollars, but she was a little afraid that this might be too much, and yet she did not wish to make the amount any smaller than could possibly be helped. So she thought of seventy-five, and then eighty, and finally remarked that Mrs. Cliff must be worth at least ninety thousand dollars. Mr. Burke looked up at the sky and wanted to whistle. "Ninety thousand dollars!" he said to himself. "I know positively that it was at least four millions at the time of the division, and she says she's richer now than she was then, which is easy to be accounted for by the interest coming in. I see her game! She wants to keep shady about her big fortune because her neighbors would expect her to live up to it, and she knows it isn't in her to live up to it. Now, I'm beginning to see through the fog." "It seems to me," said he, "that Mrs. Cliff ought to have a bigger dining-room." This remark pulled up the flood-gate to Willy's accumulated sentiments on the subject, and they poured forth in a rushing stream.