“I shall leave here to-morrow,” said Rufus.
“You won’t do any such thing. You will stay at Hawkhurst for the remainder of the week, and play the lover to Miss Wynde, and sigh like any donkey in her ears, and spout poetry, and touch her heart. ‘Faint heart never won fair lady,’ says the proverb. Girls often refuse a man the first time he offers, for fear of being held too cheap. Pursue the girl gently, but keep pursuing.”
“She says her father wrote her a letter saying he knew me,” said Rufus doggedly. “She asked me about him, and I told her I didn’t know Sir Harold from a butcher.”
“You did?” gasped Craven Black. “The devil!”
“Yes, sir.”
“Well, you have put your foot in it. I knew you were a fool, but I didn’t suppose you had arrived at such a low state of idiocy as it appears you have. Didn’t I tell you what to tell the girl if she ever spoke of her father?”
“I believe you did, but I couldn’t stand there with her eyes on me and deliberately lie to her. I understood about the letter. You wrote it.”
“Hush! I’ve a good mind to leave you to yourself, and let you fetch up in some union,” declared Craven Black angrily. “Such a dolt as you are isn’t fit to live. How do you expect the girl to marry you when you yourself put obstacles in the way?”
“See here,” said Rufus. “What are you going to make out of my marriage with Neva Wynde?”
“Ten thousand pounds a year, which you are to formally agree to pay me out of her income.”