"Not of any kind."
"How do you get it?" she asked simply, a candid light shining in the great gray eyes.
"My father was a successful saddle-maker. He is dead."
"Oh!" she said.
"Leather has made me, from childhood up—it has chastised, supported, educated me, and given me the entrée everywhere. So you see I cannot hold a candle to your demigods."
"Ah, but there is nothing like leather," said Ellaline, and stroked the head in her lap reassuringly.
The assurance permeated John Beveridge's frame like a pleasant cordial. All that was hard and leathery in him seemed to be soaked soft. Here, at last, was a woman who loved him for himself—an innocent, trusting woman in whose weakness a man might find strength. Her pure lips were like the wayside well at which the wearied wanderer from great stony cities might drink and be refreshed. And yet, delightful as her love would be in his droughty life, he felt that his could not prove less delightful to her. That he, John Beveridge, with the roses thrusting themselves into his eyes, should stoop to pick the simple little daisy at his feet, could not fail to fill her with an admiring gratitude that would add the last charm to her passion for him.
But it was not till a week afterwards that the formal proposal, so long impending, broke. They were resting in a lane and discussing everything they didn't want to discuss, the unspoken playing with subtle sweetness about the spoken.
"Have you read Mr. Gladstone's latest?" she asked at last.
"No," he said; "has Mr. Gladstone ever a latest?"