"They're dear girls, all of them, Edmund. You won't have them all with you for very long, I expect. I've had a sort of hope lately that—I don't see why such old friends as we are shouldn't talk over these things—I've a fancy that my boy thinks there's nobody in the world like your Pamela. Well, my wife says it's Pamela; I had a sort of idea myself that it was little Judith. It's one of 'em, or I'll eat my hat. Would that be agreeable to you, if it came off some day?"
Colonel Eldridge laughed. "It would be very agreeable to me," he said. "I've had things put to me that weren't so agreeable. Fathers don't seem to have much of a say in these matters nowadays. But, thank goodness, my girls weren't old enough to run all those risks of war-time. Yes, John, if that arrangement would suit you, it would certainly suit me. I've been wondering, quite lately what sort of marriage Pamela would make—realizing that she was old enough to get married, which I suppose doesn't come into a father's head about his eldest girl until it's put there."
"No; or with a son either. But Jim is my only one, and I should like him to marry early, and see my grandson growing up, if I'm spared so long. I shouldn't care for my brother Alfred's boys to come into the succession. However, that's a long way ahead yet. Jim's a steady fellow now, and inclined to take his life seriously—more seriously, perhaps, than we did when we were young fellows; but it's not a bad thing either. What I mean is that I think it would be a good thing for him to marry, and with such a wife as your Pamela—well, he'd be a very lucky fellow, and she'd get him on in the world. There's still something to do for a man in the position he'll have to fill, and the right sort of wife would help him no end."
When Lord Crowborough had pedalled himself away, Colonel Eldridge went back to his room, and sat there in front of the fire, with pleasanter thoughts to keep him company than he had had for some time. The episode with Fred Comfrey had made its mark upon him, though it had come and gone so quickly that he had suffered little distress because of it. He could hardly help thinking of himself as having come down in the world, since he was no longer able to support the modest dignity that had been his as the head of an old-established family living in the large house in the middle of his acres in which his fathers had lived before him. Fred Comfrey's proposal had seemed to mark that descent, for it had not been from among men such as he that the daughters of the house had taken their husbands. Now this so different proposal wiped out the effect of that one. If only Pamela...!
When he told his wife about it, he found that it was no new idea to her. "I didn't want to talk about it," she said, "because one is naturally careful about not appearing to rush at a marriage of that sort. There will be plenty of people to say that we have been angling for it—or that I have—if it does happen. I do think that there's no doubt about Jim. In fact, I shouldn't be in the least surprised if he hadn't put it to Pam already."
"What—do you mean to say that they have come to an understanding?"
"I'm afraid not. If he has asked her, she has refused him. I don't know, because she has said nothing to me; but one has a sort of instinct with one's own daughters. Perhaps it's more likely that she won't give him an answer yet. They are as good friends as ever. I don't think he would come here in the way he does if she had refused him definitely."
This rather dashed him. "Crowborough said something about Judith," he said. "He'd had an idea that she was the attraction; but her ladyship seems to have chased that idea out of his head."
Mrs. Eldridge laughed, and said: "For once I agree with her. I was inclined to think it was Judith at one time myself, though I'd hardly come to think of her as more than a child. They get on splendidly together, and really I think she'd be more suited to him than Pam. However, there's no good thinking of that, for it is Pam, and there's no doubt about it. Darling Pam! I do wish she would come round to it. She is taking our present troubles hardly, and it would be good for her to be lifted out of them. Perhaps she will, in time. But there's no good in pressing her; we must just leave it."