The Guinea Stamp: A Tale of Modern Glasgow

by Annie S. Swan

'I hope it may be; but if you take my advice, my dear, don't leave her alone too much, in case somebody else more enterprising and not so easily repulsed should step in before you. If I were a man I wouldn't walk off for a girl's first No.'

'You don't know a blessed thing about what you're talking of, mother,' replied George, with calm candour. 'If you were a man, and had a girl looking at you with a steady stare, and telling you to get out, well, I guess you'd get out pretty quick, that's all.'

Mrs. Fordyce laughed.

'Well, perhaps so; but it is very important that you should follow up your advantage, however slight it may be. It would be a most desirable alliance. Think of her family; it would be a splendid connection. You would be a county gentleman, to begin with.'

'And call myself Fordyce Graham? Eh, mother?' said George lazily. 'There are worse sounding names. But Gladys herself affects to have no pride in her long descent; that very day she was quoting to me that rot of Burns about rank being only the guinea stamp, and all that sort of thing. All very well for a fellow like Burns, who was only a ploughman. It has done Gladys a lot of harm living in the slums; it won't be easy eradicating her queer notions, I can tell you.'

'Oh, after she is married, if you take her well in hand, it will be easy enough,' said his mother confidently. 'She did not give you a positive refusal, then?'

'No; but I'm not going to make myself too cheap,' said George; 'it seldom pays in any circumstances—in dealings with women, never. They set all the more store by a fellow who thinks a good deal of himself.'

'Then you should be very successful,' said Mrs. Fordyce, with a smile. 'Well, remember that nothing will give your father and me greater pleasure than to hear that you are engaged to Gladys Graham.'

'Well, I'd better get out of this. Twenty minutes to eleven! By Jove, wonder what the governor would say if he were to pop in just now? Thunder's not in it.'

So the amiable and self-satisfied George took himself off to the mill, and all day long thought much of his mother's advice, and somehow he felt himself being impelled towards paying another visit to Bourhill. Out of that visit arose portentous issues, which were to have the strongest possible influence upon the future of Gladys Graham. He found her in a lonely and impressionable mood, and left the house, to his own profound astonishment, an accepted lover.