“Umph! I wonder, Leila, where you got that tongue of yours?”
“And,” dismissing the question with an airy gesture, “I know of a nice quiet place in a country village, with two darling old maiden ladies, where he will be, so to speak, out at grass, with his shoes off!”
“Oh yes,” he snarled, “I know your quiet, wicked little country village, with the devil peeping behind the hedges and finding plenty for an idle young man to do. Villages are pestilential traps, swarming with pretty girls. Just the place where Owen will fall into the worst scrape of all—matrimony. He is a good-looking chap; they’ll all be after him!”
“I don’t believe there’s a woman in Ottinge under forty, and I never saw a more hard-featured lot—never. You know I stayed in the neighbourhood with the Davenants years ago.”
“Another thing—no one can take Owen for anything but a gentleman!” and Sir Richard put up his glasses and surveyed his niece, with an air as much as to say, “There’s a poser!”
“Oh yes. He has only to show his hands, worn with manual labour, and I’ll tell him to grow his hair long, wear gaudy ties, and hold his tongue.”
“Well, have your own way! But, as sure as I’m a living sinner, harm will come of this mad idea; it’s nothing more or less than play-acting. He’d much better have gone on the stage when he was about it.”
“Unfortunately, there’s one objection,—it is the most precarious of all professions; for an amateur it would be hard work and no pay. In five years Owen might, with great luck, be earning thirty shillings a week. Oh, I’ve thought over no end of plans, I can assure you, Uncle Dick, and the chauffeur scheme is by far the most promising.”
“Of course you always get the better of me in talk; but I’ve my own opinion. You and Owen will make a fine hash of his affairs between you. Bear in mind that I won’t have the Wynyard name made little of in a stinking garage. He is not to use it, or to let any one know he is a Wynyard, and that’s flat; and you can tell him that, as sure as he takes service as Owen Wynyard, I’ll marry—and to that I stick!” and with this announcement, and a very red face, he snatched up his hat and departed.
Sir Martin Kesters, on the other hand, saw nothing derogatory in his brother-in-law’s employment, and warmly applauded the scheme. At twenty-six Owen should be learning independence; moreover, it was his wife’s plan, and, in his opinion, everything she said or did was right. “I think it’s a sound scheme,” he said. “If money is wanted, Leila, you know where to get it.”