Nelly groped her way to the bed; felt for the other's hand.
"Katty, are you crying?"
No answer.
"Katty dear, won't he marry you? Is that it? Oh, Katty, I'm so sorry...."
CHAPTER II
"I looked on you as a youngster up till now," Mr. Temple said. He did not explain what were the circumstances which had shocked him into a change of opinion; but went on, in the heavy paternal voice: "You've got to shove your way, my lad. You've been playing at life; university education, and books and travel and this and that ... I've spoilt you. No wonder your father's business wasn't good enough for you. Well—I'm not a tyrant; I raised no objections to your starting on the architect line instead. But that wasn't good enough either—though goodness knows you talked enough about the responsibility of turning cities into things of beauty and form...." He broke off: "And now here you are!"
"'Not architect, artist, nor man!'" Gareth misquoted from the immortal Pecksniff.
Mr. Temple could not repress a smile of recognition. Dickens was cultivated, read aloud, assiduously, in the large handsome parlour above the chemist's shop at Paddington. Chemist's establishment, or dispensary, Mr. Temple would have preferred it to be called. For he was a chemist of a most refined and superior order, and employed two assistants and a boy; nor was the shop on the street-level, but up a broad flight of stone steps, indicated by a single ruby lamp at their base; which caused Mr. Temple the occasional illusion that he was a surgeon. He might with equal reason have thought himself a signalman.
Nevertheless, if Gareth imagined that by so simple an expedient as the mention of his father's favourite author, he could divert the threatened lecture on his own misdoings, he was mistaken. On receipt of a letter from William Payne, President of the Society of Young Botanists, officially announcing that Gareth had abandoned his holiday with the S.Y.B., in order to spend a month in sole company of a young female, Mr. Temple had at first been inclined to secret pride at his only son's first sowing of this very gentlemanly wild oat. He had discussed the matter with his wife—with considerable delicacy, be sure; for he could never quite forget that she was a gentlewoman, and above him in station: Miss Lucy Jamieson, before he had married her; governess to a family of consequence in the sleepy little country town where he had first "practised" before coming to London. Her opinions, therefore, influenced him more than he was prepared to acknowledge. And his present reproaches were the direct outcome of his change of mental attitude: If my son is old enough to incur responsibilities, he is old enough to be in a material position to discharge them....
"You'll come into all the money later on. 'Tisn't that I grudge your allowance, either. But I want to see what stuff you're made of."