"I left home," he went on, "because my father wanted to shove me into a nice comfortable job in a soap-works. I wanted to earn my own living on my own merits. And then, when I manage to get free, he thoughtfully steps in front of me, so to speak, and without my knowing it, makes the path smooth for me!"
"What an idealist you are, Mr. Speed!"
"What?"
"An idealist. So innocent of the world! Personally, I think your father's action extremely kind. And also I regard your own condition as one of babyish innocence. Did you really suppose that an unknown man, aged twenty-three, with a middling degree and only one moderately successful term's experience, would be offered the Mastership of the most important House at Millstead, unless there'd been a little private manœuvring behind the scenes? Did you think that, in the ordinary course of nature, a man like Ervine would be only too willing to set you up in Lavery's with his daughter for a wife?"
"Ah, that's it! He wanted me to marry Helen, didn't he?"
"My dear man, wasn't it perfectly obvious that he did? All through last summer term you kept meeting her in the school grounds and behaving in a manner for which any other Master would have been instantly sacked, and all he did was to smile and be nice and keep inviting you to dinner!"
Speed cried excitedly: "Yes, that's what my father said. He said it was a plant; that Ervine in the end proved himself the cleverer of the two."
"Your father told you that?"
"No, I overheard it."
"Your father, I take it, didn't like Helen?"