"I haven't even been doing that. The governor made me a lot of promises, and I didn't ask him to make one of them."
"What about Partisham?"
"You know as well as I do that he'd definitely made up his mind to leave as much away from you as he could, and that was the chief thing he had to leave away. I didn't ask him to do it, but——"
"It didn't occur to you to ask him not to do it, I suppose? Because it's a pretty stiff thing to do—to leave away most of what keeps up the place."
"No, it didn't occur to me, and it wouldn't have occurred to you if you'd been in my place. I tell you I didn't ask for anything, except for enough to get married on. But when it came to having it chucked at me—well, if you want the plain truth, it happened to suit my book."
"Yes, I dare say it did. And what about Aunt Laura? You've been doing pretty well out of her too, haven't you?"
Humphrey flushed again. "Look here," he said, "I'm not going to talk to you any longer. You stand there sneering because you've got everything you want now, and you think you can amuse yourself by baiting me. I'm going upstairs, and you can do your sneering by yourself. Only I'll tell you this before I go. I'm going to play my hand, and I don't care whether I've got you up against me or not. I consider I've been precious badly treated. I'm encouraged to go and tell the Aldeburghs all sorts of things about what's going to be done for me when I'm married, and I come back and am told coolly that none of it's going to happen at all, and I'm to consider myself d——d lucky to get just enough to live on."
"Well, you're going to have a bit more than enough to live on, and you're welcome to it as far as I'm concerned. And the dower-house too—for a bit."
"Thanks very much. I'm likely to take that on—live in a house by your kind permission and get kicked out the moment you want it for yourself!"
"You won't get kicked out, as you call it, for two years at least. I should think that's good enough."