"I'm sorry to prove a disappointment," said Heriot. "Tell your daughter so for me. I'd do what you want with pleasure, if I were able. You know that, I'm sure?"
"Oh, I know that," said Cheriton; "it can't be helped. Yes, I'll tell her. She will be disappointed, of course; she understands how difficult the thing is without influence, and I've talked about you a lot."
"Do you think you were wise to—to——"
"Oh, it was a mistake as it turns out!"
"I don't mean that only. I mean, do you think you were wise to encourage her hopes in such a direction at all? Frankly, if I had a daughter—— Forgive me for speaking plainly."
"My dear fellow! your daughter and mine!—their paths would be as wide apart as the poles. And you don't know Mamie!"
"At all events I know that the stage is more overcrowded every year. Most girls are stage-struck at some time or other; and there are hundreds of actresses who can't earn bread-and-cheese. A man I know has his type-writing done by a woman who used to be on the stage. She played the best parts in the country, I believe, and, I daresay, nursed the expectation of becoming a Bernhardt. She gets a pound a week in his office, he tells me, and was thankful to obtain the post."
"Mamie is bound to come to the front. She's got it—she's an artist born. I tell you, I should be brutal to stand in the way of her career; the girl is pining, really pining, for distinction! When you've talked to her you'll change your views."
"Perhaps," said Heriot, as the shortest way of ending the discussion; "very likely I'm wrong." The budding genius bored him. "Mind you explain to the young lady that my inability, and not my will, refuses, at any rate."
"That's all right," declared Cheriton, getting up. "I told her I was coming round to see if it was you." He laughed. "I bet she's picturing me coming back with a bushel of letters of introduction from you by now! Well, I must be going; it's getting late."