"In that respect I believe I take after you," returned his son, with the deepest respect. "A strong determination to have your own way, helps a man to shove through life—so I have understood you to say."
"Had me there, neatly, Gilbert! Yes, you score one. Well—well—but seriously,—I want to have a little rational talk with you. There is that fine place of yours in Berkshire, shut up all the year round—think——"
"Don't say, of my position again, sir, I implore you," interrupted his son, with a mock tragic gesture.
"Well, your stake in the country—think of your tenants."
"I have remembered them to the tune of a reduction of thirty per cent.—What more do they want?"
"They would like you to marry some nice-looking girl, and go down, and live among them."
"If I did, and kept up a large establishment, took the hounds, and kept tribes of servants, and had a wife who dressed in hundred-guinea gowns, and went in for private theatricals, balls, races,—and probably betting,—I should not be able to make such a pleasant little abatement in the rent! How would that be?"
"You would never marry a minx like that, I should hope! Listen to me, Gilbert," now waxing pathetic, "I am getting to be an old man, and you are all I have belonging to me. I am lost here alone in this great big mansion. Marry, and make your home with me; my bark is worse than my bite, as you know, I would like to see a woman about the house again—they are cheerful, and brighten up a place, especially if they are young and pretty. Just look at the two of us sitting on here over our coffee till nearly eleven o'clock, simply because the big drawing-room above is empty.—I am not nearly as keen about the club as I used to be, and these attacks of gout play the very devil with me."
And here, to his son's blank amazement, he suddenly dropped into poetry, and quavered out,—
"Oh woman! in our hours of ease,