The young man was as hushed for a little as if an organ-tone were still in the air. “May I inquire,” he at last returned, “if Miss Prodmore’s ideas of comfort are as well defined—and in her case, I may add, as touchingly modest—as her father’s? Is she a responsible party of this ingenious arrangement?”
Mr. Prodmore rendered homage—his appreciation was marked—to the elevated character of his young friend’s scruple. “Miss Prodmore, Captain Yule, may be perhaps best described as a large smooth sheet of blank, though gilt-edged, paper. No image of any tie but the true and perfect filial has yet, I can answer for it, formed itself on the considerable expanse. But for that image to be projected——”
“I’ve only, in person, to appear?” Yule asked with an embarrassment that he tried to laugh off.
“And, naturally, in person,” Mr. Prodmore intelligently assented, “do yourself, as well as the young lady, justice. Do you remember what you said when I first, in London, laid the matter before you?”
Clement Yule did remember, but his amusement increased. “I think I said it struck me I should first take a look at—what do you call it?—the corpus delicti.”
“You should first see for yourself what you had really come into? I was not only eager for that,” said Mr. Prodmore, “but I’m willing to go further: I’m quite ready to hear you say that you think you should also first see the young lady.”
Captain Yule continued to laugh. “There is something in that then, since you mention it!”
“I think you’ll find that there’s everything.” Mr. Prodmore again looked at his watch. “Which will you take first?”
“First?”
“The young lady or the house?”