"I will make a clean breast of it to you," I said. "I am a University Extension lecturer, and am also employed in editing educational works."
"A very honourable occupation," said Mr. Perry. "A scholar is always a respectable person, and his calling is not a lucrative one."
"I hope," I said, "that there will never be any doubt about my being able to support Miriam in the poor way in which a daughter of yours ought to live."
Mr. Perry sighed pensively. "I will not deny," he said, "that I should have liked a larger settlement. I have already sacrificed one daughter to my passion for the amelioration of mankind, and although Herman Eppstein's character is irreproachable I suffer somewhat from the remarks of my friends as to that marriage. I should have liked Miriam to make what the world calls a good match, and to be placed beyond all risk of wealth. Still, with what I can do for you, you will start your married life in embarrassed circumstances, and we must hope that no unforeseen accidents will occur. If you keep to your comparatively ill-paid work, and avoid the temptation that so many young men fall into, of trying to get poor quick, all will go well. It is something, at any rate, to have a daughter marrying into a Highland family, and my friends can hardly reproach me with another misalliance in that respect."
He said this with an agreeable smile, and I left him, feeling that I had got through the interview more easily than I could have hoped for.
I had the congratulations of Lord Arthur. He himself was in the stage of walking out, or rather of walking in her garden, with a house-maid from a neighbouring establishment—one of the prettiest of the débutantes of the season—and was inclined towards sympathy with my state of mind. He said that the earlier a fellow settled down in life the better it was for him, and directly he and his fiancée could find a situation as butler and housekeeper to an amenable married couple without encumbrances, their wedding would take place. He talked more about his own love affair than about mine, and made it plain—although I am sure that he did not intend to—that my engagement was but a moderate affair beside his. His father was a Marquis, and would largely decrease his younger son's allowance upon his marriage; and his prospective father-in-law was a Dean of aristocratic lineage, who was prepared to settle on his daughter the whole debt for repairing the West front of his cathedral.
Edward's attitude was a mixture of pleasure and anxiety. He said he liked me personally, and there was no one to whom he would rather see his sister married if he saw no difficulties in the way. "You won't tell us where you come from," he said rather peevishly. "No one can call me curious about my neighbours' affairs—I have far too many and important ones of my own to occupy me—but if you are going to marry my sister I should like to know something more about you. How did you come here? If you walked from the Highlands, you couldn't have come into Culbut on the side on which my father first saw you."
"I have already told you how I came," I said. "I walked over the moors, and came through an underground passage into the wood where your father found me. I don't profess to understand it; but that is exactly how it happened."
He looked at me suspiciously. "My dear fellow," he said, "you are playing with me. My father found you asleep in a little copse that you have to pass through to get to the Female Penitentiary, which he was visiting that afternoon. Beyond that there is at least a mile of suburb; it is on the high-road to the town of Somersault, and the country is well populated all the way."
"I am not surprised to hear it," I said. "I told you that I did not understand what had happened. But I have given you the facts as I remember them."