"What are you getting at present?"
"A hundred and twenty a year."
This was about two thirds of the salary Lord Caversham paid his chauffeur. He asked another question in his curious, abrupt staccato manner:—
"How much do you want?"
"We could make both ends meet on two hundred; but another fifty would enable me to make her a lot more comfortable," said the curate wistfully.
The great man surveyed him silently—wonderingly, too, if the curate had known. Presently he asked:
"Afraid of hard work?"
"No work is hard to a man with a wife and a home of his own," replied the curate with simple fervor.
Lord Caversham smiled grimly. He had more homes of his own than he could conveniently live in, and he had been married three times; but even he found work hard now and then.
"I wonder!" he said. "Well, good-afternoon. I should like to be introduced to your fiancée some day."