"I always do."
"I know you do; whenever she's seen you, she looks at me proudly for a week and tells me what a 'charming young man' Mr. Corri is—'how clever!' The only fault she finds with you is that you haven't got married."
"Tell her that I have what the novelists call an 'ideal.'"
"When did you catch it?"
"Last year. A fellow I know married the 'Baby'—an adoring daughter that thought all her family unique."
"And——?"
"My ideal is the blessing who is still unappropriated at twenty-eight. She'll have discovered by then that her mother isn't infallible; that her brothers aren't the first living authorities on wines, the fine arts, horseflesh, and the sciences; and that the 'happy home' isn't incapable of improvement. In fact, she'll have got a little tired of it."
"You've the wisdom of a relieved widower."
"I have seen," said Corri widely. "The fellow, you know! Married fellows are an awfully 'liberal education.' This one has been turned into a nurse—among the several penalties of his selection. The treasure is for ever dancing on to wet pavements in thin shoes and sandwiching imbecilities between colds on the chest. He swears you may move the Himalayas sooner than teach a girl of twenty to take care of herself. He told me so with tears in his eyes. I mean to be older than my wife, and she has got to be twenty-eight, so it's necessary to wait a few years. I may be able to support her, too, by then; that's another thing in favour of delay."
"I'll represent the matter in the proper light for you on the next occasion."