Why he had remained so long a bachelor had long been matter for speculation, not only to the feminine portion of the community, but also to his men friends; but thirty-five still found Rupert Mernside unmarried, and the manoeuvres of match-making mothers, and of daughters trained to play up to their mothers' tactics, had hitherto failed to lead him in the desired direction.
"My dear Rupert," his young cousin said solemnly, after a pause, "you are a bachelor—the fact is painfully self-evident; you have enough money to—settle down and become domesticated. There are hundreds—no—thousands of young women in the world, who would 'meet you with a view to matrimony.' It seems a crying shame that you should waste your sweetness on the desert air—when you might be blooming in a fair lady's garden."
"You utter young rotter," Mernside ejaculated, laughing as he rose, and stretched himself, "if you are so keen on matrimonial advertisements, why not put one in on your own account?"
"Awful sport," Layton ejaculated; "think of the piles of letters you would get from every kind of marriageable woman—old and young. And you might arrange to meet any number of them at different places, and have no end of a ripping time. You only have to ask them to meet you with a view to matrimony; the matrimony needn't come off, unless both parties are satisfied."
"Silly ass!" Mernside exclaimed again, with a laugh that mitigated the words, "one of these days you'll find yourself in some unpleasantly tangled web, my boy, if you play the goat over matrimonial advertisements. Better leave well alone and come up to Handwell Manor with me. Cicely wants a message taken to the Dysons."
"Cicely's messages are like the poor—always with us," the younger man answered flippantly; "no, thank you, Rupert; on this genial and pleasant November afternoon, when you can't see half a mile ahead of you for the mist, and the country lanes are two feet deep in mud, I prefer the smoking-room fire. Besides, I have letters to write."
"I'll go with you, Mernside"; the man who had been lounging against the mantelpiece straightened himself, and flung away the end of his cigarette; "Cicely won't be down till tea-time; she is spending the afternoon in the nursery, looking after the small girl. Confounded nuisance for her that the nurse had to go off in a hurry like this, for my respected sister was not intended by nature for the care of children."
"Fortunate she has only one," Mernside answered; "what would she have done with a large family party?"
"Managed by hook or by crook to get a party of nurses and nurserymaids to mind them," laughed the other man; "she's the dearest little soul alive, but Cicely never ought to have been a mother, though I shouldn't say that, excepting to you two who are members of the family, and know of what stuff Cicely and I are made."
Mernside and Layton joined in the laughter, and the younger man said lazily: