“I don’t believe the boy’s health will stand it, Felicia; come and see for yourself.”
Felicia packed her smallest box and went.
When Rodney came back from business that evening Selina, the parlormaid, informed him that a lady was waiting in the drawing-room to see him. Selina, usually so grim, was all “nods and becks and wreathed smiles”; she liked Rodney, though he did “throw about his clothes something shameful.”
He was very tired and his head ached, as it always did in the evening lately, but something in the maid’s tone made him forget his weariness, and he raced up the stairs certain that only one lady could have produced such unwonted geniality on Selina’s part. But he paused on the mat outside the door; suppose it should only be his aunt! She had never come yet, but she might, and how was Selina to know that he did not care particularly for his aunt?
The door opened suddenly from the inside.
“I knew nobody else would come upstairs like that. What were you waiting for, you dear goose?”—and Rodney’s mother inspected her boy for herself.
Next day she went to see her brother at his office, and told him that she had decided to accept Mr. Fenton’s offer. She rather surprised Uncle Henry, she was so decided and so cool; he did not know that Cecil Connop had got up two hours earlier than usual, in order to have plenty of time to fortify Felicia for the interview, only leaving her at the office door.
“Do you think he will refuse to have anything more to do with us?” she had asked timidly.
“He couldn’t be so absurdly unjust,” answered Cecil stoutly; “but, even if he were, you have Rodney to think of. It is a chance in a thousand; it would be worse than madness to throw it away. He’s a square little peg, is Rodney; you’ll never fit him into that hole.”
Uncle Henry gave in quite graciously, though he was not best pleased. Had he but known it, he revenged himself upon Mr. Fenton for his interference by writing him a solemn letter of thanks, in which he spoke of his “generous, nay munificent offer.” “Fireworks Fenton,” very red and uncomfortable, rolled the letter into a ball and dropped it into his waste-paper basket, exclaiming: