So Pa was introduced to the Bride; and she afterwards told Hubby that he was like any other Pa, only a little more so. And, she being a girl of sense as well as of spirit, Pa didn’t seem to mind talking to her a little, particularly as she knew so much about rheumatism, because it was Granny’s complaint.
Had Lord Warlock tried the new treatment?
No; what was that?
The new treatment called for explanation. Duly forthcoming with minuteness and lucidity. No; not a designing minx, mesdames, altogether. Tact, certainly; but it had its roots, remember, in a heart as sound as a bell, overflowing with practical sympathy for all the world and his wife.
“Grandmamma has a book about it, and a special apparatus. It has done her a power of good—a power of good. She will be delighted to lend them, I’m sure—that’s if you care, Lord Warlock. It’s a wonderful invention, and I’ll bring it round this afternoon, and show you how it works.”
“Thank yah,” said the Ex-Ambassador to Persia. “And I’ll be devilish obliged.”
Hubby, though, was not doing quite so well with the Sealskin Coat. Brighthelmstone so dull and tiresome, so cold, and hotels so unpleasant; and all the time the fair speaker announced these drawbacks she looked not so much at the young man who ought to have married her, but out of the corner of a cold blue eye at the person who was talking to Pa as though she knew all about his complaint.
“Thank yah,” said Pa, touching his hat, one of those hard, square felt ones whose ugliness nought can surpass, as the procession passed on. “The Suffolk. Don’t forget.”
A designing minx—madam, we do not agree. Mere tact, you know. And it was perfectly clear that her quick, spontaneous, practical sympathy had left its mark even on that unpromising subject.
Not such a fool as I thought he was not to have taken this gal off my hands, reflected the Uncompromising Subject within the precincts of his bath chair. And then, with the air of one who nurses an injury, he proceeded to inquire of the Seventh Unmarried Daughter—