“All right, then. Until six o’clock?”
“Yes.”
“Very well, six o’clock,” the man agreed, and withdrew.
“I can’t bear to think of your going to your father again, Mary,” sighed the rector, bitterly. “Dick has been a shocking muddler in his affairs—as bad as his father, without his father’s excuse. God knows, I’ve been too busy with parish affairs to attend properly to my own, whereas he—”
“He is young, John,” pleaded the indulgent mother, “and ought to be in receipt of a handsome allowance from his grandfather. He has only been spending what really should be his.” 65
“Sophistry, my darling, sophistry!”
“At any rate, I’m going up to my father to get money from him, by hook or by crook. We must have it, or we are irretrievably ruined.”