"Camelias! My dear girl, what a question! I gave Miss Holt credit for better taste than liking camelias. Beastly things, as stiff and conventional as dahlias or sunflowers. You might just as well have a wax rose from an artificial flower-maker while you are about it."
Edie laughed and looked at Nellie. "See here," she said, taking up Ernest's bunches from the little specimen vases where she had put them to keep them fresh in water, "somebody else has thought of the flowers already."
Harold laughed, too, a little uneasily. "Aha," he said, "I see Ernest has been beforehand with me as usual. I'm always a day too late. It seems to me I'm the Esau of this duet, and Ernest's the Jacob. Well, Miss Holt, you must take the will for the deed; and after all, one will do for your dress and the other for your hair, won't they?"
"Harold," said his father, as they went upstairs together to dress for dinner, "Nellie Holt's a very nice girl, and I've reason to believe—you know I don't judge these matters without documentary evidence—I have reason to believe that she'll come into the greater part of old Stanley Holt's money. She's his favourite niece, and she benefits largely, as I happen to know, under his will. Verbum sap., my dear boy; she's a pretty girl, and has sweet manners. In my opinion, she'd make——"
"My dear Pater," Harold exclaimed, interrupting him, "for Heaven's sake don't say so. Pretty enough, I grant you; and no doubt old Stanley Holt's money would be a very nice thing in its way; but just seriously consider now, if you were a young man yourself, what on earth could you see in Nellie Holt to attract your love or admiration? Why, she shrinks and blushes every time she speaks to you. No, no, whenever I marry I should like to marry a girl of some presence and some character."
"Well, well," said his father, pausing a second at his bedroom door, "perhaps if she don't suit you, Harold, she'll suit Ernest."
"I should have thought, Pater, you knew us two better than that by this time."
"But, my dear Harold, you can't both marry the same woman!"
"No, we can't, Pater, but it's my opinion we shall both fall unanimously in love with her, at any rate, whenever we happen to see her."