“Oh, no fear on that score. My profession will give me plenty of work; besides, what is the use of education, if it be not to render it impossible for a man to know the meaning of the word ennui? Put me alone in the waiting-room of some little wayside station to wait three hours for a train, and I should still be perfectly happy, even if there were no such thing as a book to be got for miles.”
“Well, well, if you must vanish to Elstan, do. At any rate, remember your old Camford friends, and let us hear of you sometimes? I suppose you’ll keep on your Fellowship at least for a year?”
“Insidious questioner!” said Julian; “no, I hope to be married very soon. You shall come down and see love in a cottage.”
“Aha, I see it all now,” said Mr Admer, with a sigh.
“Nay, you mustn’t sigh. I expect to be congratulated, not pitied,” said Julian, gaily. “A wife will sweeten all the cares and sorrows of life, and instead of withering away my prime in selfish isolation, and spending these still half-youthful years in loneliness, and without a real home, I shall feel myself complete in the materials of happiness. After all, ambition such as yours is a loveless bride.”
So Julian accepted Elstan, and Lillyston went with him to London to help him in selecting furniture for the vicarage which was so soon to receive a bride.
“Are you really going to venture on matrimony with only 200 pounds a year?” asked Lillyston.
“I have some more of my own, you know, Hugh; Mr Carden’s legacy, you remember; but even if I hadn’t, I would still marry even on a hundred a year if I wished and the lady consented.”
“And repent at leisure.”
“Not a bit of it. If I were a man to whom lavender-coloured kid gloves and unlimited eau-de-cologne were necessaries of life, it might be folly to think of it. But if a man be brave, and manly, and fearless of convention, let him marry by all means, and not make his life bitter and his love cold by long delay.”