“So I told him. Now there are a large family of them, you see; and of course he can’t give Marian much.”
“I don’t care a straw if he doesn’t give her a shilling. If she cared for me, or I for her, I shouldn’t look after her for her money.”
“But a little money is not a bad thing, Maurice,” said Miss Jack, who in her time had had a good deal, and had managed to take care of it.
“It is all one to me.”
“But what I was going to say is this—hum—ha. I don’t like to pledge myself for fear I should raise hopes which mayn’t be fulfilled.”
“Don’t pledge yourself to anything, aunt, in which Marian Leslie and I are concerned.”
“But what I was going to say is this; my money, what little I have, you know, must go some day either to you or to the Leslies.”
“You may give all to them if you please.”
“Of course I may, and I dare say I shall,” said Miss Jack, who was beginning to be irritated. “But at any rate you might have the civility to listen to me when I am endeavouring to put you on your legs. I am sure I think about nothing else, morning, noon, and night, and yet I never get a decent word from you. Marian is too good for you; that’s the truth.”
But at length Miss Jack was allowed to open her budget, and to make her proposition; which amounted to this—that she had already told Mr. Leslie that she would settle the bulk of her property conjointly on Maurice and Marian if they would make a match of it. Now as Mr. Leslie had long been casting a hankering eye after Miss Jack’s money, with a strong conviction however that Maurice Cumming was her favourite nephew and probable heir, this proposition was not unpalatable. So he agreed to go down to Mount Pleasant and look about him.