“Uncle A., there’s a friend of mine wants to come and see me. Can I ask him to look in, one evening?”
“Say about nine o’clock—after supper.” Uncle Alfred did not stress the point, but Rose perfectly understood his reservation. “Yes, if you want to. Who is the young man?”
“It’s not a young man. It’s Lord Charlesbury. He’s a friend of the Aviolets.”
“You needn’t tell me that. You didn’t pick up a lord off your own bat, my girl, and it wouldn’t speak any the better for you if you had. What are his intentions?”
“Uncle! You don’t understand. It isn’t that sort of thing at all. I never heard any one so old-fashioned as you are. He just wants to call on me.”
“Rose, you know what the Apostle Paul says as to the conduct of widows. At the same time, I should be the first person to rejoice if you were to find a good husband, and a man who would be a father—and a better father—to your boy. And the aristocracy of this country are such——”
“Don’t fly off like that, Uncle,” Rose besought him. She was not embarrassed, only mildly anxious to restrain the pawnbroker’s imaginative flights.
“I’m not thinking of marrying anybody—if you remember, poor Jim wasn’t the sort of husband that would make me want another of the same kind in a hurry—and I don’t believe Lord Charlesbury is, either.”
“Has he been married?”
“Yes. He’s a widower.”