“My boy, there is nothing so objectionable as advice.”
“I beg your pardon. I only thought——”
“Then don’t think on my behalf at all events,” snapped Mr. Sorley, who appeared rather ruffled by Fuller’s reflection on his age. “When you come to my years, Alan, I doubt if you will look so healthy as I do.”
The young man mentally admitted that it was possible he might not wear so well. Sorley was a marvel of preservation, and although he had turned sixty certainly did not look more than forty-five at the most, save for his white hair. His face was almost without wrinkles; his form, spare and lean, was unbowed, and the up-to-date clothes he always affected gave him quite a youthful air at a distance. In fact he was a very handsome man in an elderly way, and but for his shifty eyes and slack mouth—these marred his appearance considerably—he would have impressed people even more than he already did. But with all his juvenile aspect and ingratiating ways, there was something untrustworthy about the man. At least Alan thought so, and had always thought so, but perhaps he might have been more observant than the usual run of humanity, for Marie’s uncle was extremely popular, although his usual life was somewhat after the style of a hermit. But this Mr. Sorley ascribed less to inclination than to the want of money, since he humorously said that he and Marie, unable to make both ends meet, had to make one end vegetables.
“You are wonderful, Mr. Sorley,” said Alan, hastening to soothe the old man’s easily hurt vanity. “I never saw you look better. How do you manage to knock all these years off your age?”
“Abstention from over-drinking and overeating,” said Mr. Sorley briskly, giving his recipe for everlasting youth. “An hour’s sleep in the afternoon and plenty of it at night. Cold tubs, dumbbell exercises in the altogether as Trilby says with the window open, judicious walks and an optimistic way of looking at things. There you are,” he ended with his favourite catch-phrase as usual.
“Now you must add trips on a motor bicycle,” laughed Alan, smiling. “By the way, how is Marie?”
“Blooming as a rose, fresh as a daisy, cheerful as a lark,” prattled Mr. Sorley, with a swift and not altogether approving glance at the speaker’s face. “She’ll be getting married soon. I can’t expect to keep such beauty and grace hidden from the world. And she must make a good match, my lad”—this was for Alan’s particular benefit as the young man knew very well——“a title and money, good looks and a landed estate, with brains added. That is the suitor I have chosen for Marie.”
“You are looking for a bird of paradise,” said Fuller, coloring at the hint conveyed, “does such perfection exist in a mere human being?”
“I hope so; I hope so,” said Sorley, still cheery and still shifty in his glance, “we must look for the rarity, my lad. But I’m in no hurry to lose Marie. She is a great comfort to her old uncle. I was annoyed the other day, greatly annoyed, and she talked me into quite a good humor.”