I moved from Oxford Street to the new “Horseshoe” that year—it had just been rebuilt—and there I saw a good deal of them, for they came in to lunch there or supper pretty regular. Young “Kipper”—or the “Captain” as everybody called him—gave out that he was her half-brother.
“I’ad to be some sort of a relation, you
see,” he explained to me. “I’d a’ been ’er brother out and out; that would have been simpler, only the family likeness wasn’t strong enough. Our styles o’ beauty ain’t similar.” They certainly wasn’t.
“Why don’t you marry her?” I says, “and have done with it?”
He looked thoughtful at that. “I did think of it,” he says, “and I know, jolly well, that if I ’ad suggested it ’fore she’d found herself, she’d have agreed, but it don’t seem quite fair now.”
“How d’ye mean fair?” I says.
“Well, not fair to ’er,” he says. “I’ve got on all right, in a small way; but she—well, she can just ’ave ’er pick of the nobs. There’s one on ’em as I’ve made inquiries about. ’E’ll be a dook, if a kid pegs out as is expected to, and anyhow
’e’ll be a markis, and ’e means the straight thing—no errer. It ain’t fair for me to stand in ’er way.”
“Well,” I says, “you know your own business, but it seems to me she wouldn’t have much way to stand in if it hadn’t been for you.”
“Oh, that’s all right,” he says. “I’m fond enough of the gell, but I shan’t clamour for a tombstone with wiolets, even if she ain’t ever Mrs. Capt’n Kit. Business is business; and I ain’t going to queer ’er pitch for ’er.”