“What’s the use of doing anything else?” inquired Harold. “You know how I am situated.”
“I know your father.”
“That is enough. He writes to me that he finds it impossible to continue my allowance on its present scale. His expenses are daily increasing, he says. I believe him.”
“Too many people believe in him,” said Edmund. “I have never been among them.”
“But you can easily believe that his expenses are daily increasing.”
“Oh, yes, I am easily credulous on that point. Does he go the length of assigning any reason for the increase?”
“It’s perfectly preposterous—he has no notion of the responsibilities of fatherhood—of the propriety of its limitations so far as an exchange of confidences is concerned. Why, if it were the other way—if I were to write to tell him that I was in love, I would feel a trifle awkward—I would think it almost indecent to quote poetry—Swinburne—something about crimson mouths.”
“I dare say; but your father—”
“He writes to tell me that he is in love.”
“In love?”