“Of course I am, you old ass. I shouldn’t marry her if I wasn’t. It’ll be a bit of a pinch till I’m qualified, though.”
“I say, I hope you’ll be happy.”
A sudden pang of something like envy overwhelmed Edwin. The picture of settled peace, romantic love in a cottage, that W.G. was about to share with the undeniably beautiful Sister Merrion struck him as an ideal state.
“You’re a lucky devil, W.G.,” he said.
It seemed unreasonable that W.G. should devote himself to the smaller problem of Edwin’s ways and means on the eve of such a momentous adventure. It hardly seemed fair to bother him.
“We’re going into rooms in Alvaston at first,” he said. “It’ll be less expensive than furnishing, and we don’t intend to indulge in a family for the present. Meanwhile, if I were you, I should go and talk to the manager at Edmondson’s. He may be able to put you on to something. Yes . . . have a shot at him first, and mention my name, he’s a very decent sort.”
Edwin laughed to himself. It seemed to him that he was in the grip of a curiously ironical fate, for Edmondson’s was the identical firm of wholesale druggists with whom his father had been employed on his first arrival at North Bromwich. History was repeating itself in a way that was proper to romance.
In the afternoon he went down to Edmondson’s and asked for the manager, a vigorous person with shrewd eyes that he screwed up habitually whenever he made a point in his conversation. He called Edwin “Doctor”: a form of address that was flattering, until Edwin realised that it was no more than a habit with him. “Ingleby,” he said; “let me see, I know the name.”
“Probably you know my father. He’s in business at Halesby.”
“Ah, yes, of course . . . your father. Come along to my room, doctor, and have a cigar.”