“MY father's? IS it likely? He expects me to marry into some distinguished English family.”
I hummed a moment. “Well, out with it!” I exclaimed, pointing my cigar at him.
He leaned back in his chair and told me the whole story. A pretty girl; golden hair; introduced to her by a friend; nice, simple little thing; mind and heart above the irregular stage on to which she had been driven by poverty alone; father dead; mother in reduced circumstances. “To keep the home together, poor Sissie decided—”
“Precisely so,” I murmured, knocking off my ash. “The usual self-sacrifice! Case quite normal! Everything en regle!”
“You don't mean to say you doubt it?” he cried, flushing up, and evidently regarding me as a hopeless cynic. “I do assure you, Dr. Cumberledge, the poor child—though miles, of course, below Miss Tepping's level—is as innocent, and as good—”
“As a flower in May. Oh, yes; I don't doubt it. How did you come to propose to her, though?”
He reddened a little. “Well, it was almost accidental,” he said, sheepishly. “I called there one evening, and her mother had a headache and went up to bed. And when we two were left alone, Sissie talked a great deal about her future and how hard her life was. And after a while she broke down and began to cry. And then—”
I cut him short with a wave of my hand. “You need say no more,” I put in, with a sympathetic face. “We have all been there.”
We paused a moment, while I puffed smoke at the photograph again. “Well,” I said at last, “her face looks to me really simple and nice. It is a good face. Do you see her often?”
“Oh, no; she's on tour.”