"I don't want a wife who is an echo of myself," he retorted.
"She's jealous——"
"I wouldn't give a groat for a woman who wasn't," he responded.
"She is so extravagant," I went on, "that I never let even Sandy know her bills."
He made no answer to this whatever, as though it were a matter beneath discussion.
"She will forget you for days at a time while she's rhyme-making," I went on. "She will be interested in other men until the day she dies—" his eye darkened at this—"and to sum it up, I don't know any woman more unsuited to you; but if she will have you, you've my consent," and I reached out my hand to him. "God bless you," I cried, and before our hands had parted Sandy came around the turn of the path.
"You've done just what I knew you'd do, Jock Stair," he said, glowering first at his son and then at me, "and ye know as well as I the foolishness of it. Take a man like this lad, who has been spoiled by an overfond mother, and a woman like Nancy, who has had her own way since birth, marry them to each other, and you've a magnificent basis for trouble. Why don't you marry your cousin Isabel? You'd thoughts of it before you left London!" he ended, in a futile way.
"I'm going to marry Nancy Stair, if she'll have me," Danvers replied, doggedly.
"Well, well, she may not have you," Sandy replied, soothingly. "And as she's under the lilacs you may care to join her."
Nothing passed between Danvers and Nancy on the subject of marriage that morning, and I found at luncheon a probable explanation of the fact by reason of her absorption in the labor training idea and the building of an extension on the Burnside.