“You said something about my allowance, I think.”
“If I did not I failed in my duty as a father, and I don’t often do that, my boy—thank God, I don’t often do that.”
“No,” said Harold. “If the whole duty of a father is comprised in acquainting his son with the various reductions that he says he finds it necessary to make in his allowance, you are the most exemplary of fathers, pater.”
“There is a suspicion of sarcasm—or what is worse, epigram in that phrase,” said the father. “Never mind, you cannot epigram away the stern fact that I have now barely a sufficient income to keep body and soul together. I wish you could.”
“So do I,” said Harold. “But yours is a ménage à trois. It is not merely body and soul with your but body, soul, and sentiment—it is the third element that is the expensive one.”
“I dare say you are right. Anyhow, I grieve for your position, my boy. If it had pleased Heaven to make me a rich man, I would see that your allowance was a handsome one.”
“But since it has pleased the other Power to make you a poor one—”
“You must marry Miss Craven—that’s the end of the whole matter, and an end that most people would be disposed to regard as a very happy one, too. She is a virtuous young woman, and what is better, she dresses extremely well. What is best of all, she has several thousands a year.”
There was a suggestion of the eighteenth century phraseology in Lord Fotheringay’s speech, that made him seem at least a hundred years old. Surely people did not turn up their eyes and talk of virtue since the eighteenth century, Harold thought. The word had gone out. There was no more need for it. The quality is taken for granted in the nineteenth century.
“You are a trifle over-vehement,” said he.