"And what can I do for you?"
"Well, Uncle Reginald, you can do a great deal for me if you will. Of course you've heard of all those rows of mine?"
"I have heard something."
"Everybody has heard," said Tom, mournfully. "I don't suppose anybody was ever knocked so much about as I've been for the last six months."
"I'm sorry for that, Tom."
"I'm sure you are, because you're always good-natured. Now I wonder if you will do a great thing to oblige me."
"Let us hear what it is," said Uncle Reginald.
"I suppose you know that there is only one thing in the world that I want." Mr. Dosett thought that it would be discreet to make no reply to this, but, turning his chair partly round, he prepared to listen very attentively to what his nephew might have to say to him. "All this about the policeman and the rest of it has simply come from my being so unhappy about Ayala."
"It wouldn't be taken as a promise of your being a good husband, Tom, when you get into such a mess as that."
"That's because people don't understand," said Tom. "It is because I am so earnest about it, and because I can't bear the disappointment! There isn't one at Travers and Treason who doesn't know that if I'd married Ayala I should have settled down as quiet a young man as there is in all London. You ask the governor else himself. As long as I thought there was any hope I used to be there steady as a rock at half-past nine. Everybody knew it. So I should again, if she'd only come round."