That girl-child was the one human thing he had to love, and he lavished love upon her. He taught her, trained her to appreciate all that is best in literature, yet kept her simple as a child, and thought of her as if she were still a child after her eighteenth birthday, and so was taken by surprise when Sir Hector Perivale, who had met her at friendly parties in the neighbourhood, came to him at the end of the shooting season, and asked to be accepted as her future husband.
He had offered himself to Grace, and Grace had not said no. Grace had allowed him to call upon the rector.
Mr. Mallandine looked up from his book like a man in a dream.
"Marry my Grace!" he cried. "Why, she has hardly done with her dolls. It seems only yesterday she was sitting on the carpet over there"—pointing to a corner of his library—"playing with her doll's-house."
"Indeed, rector, she is a woman, and a very clever woman. She gave me excellent advice the other day when we were threatened with a strike in the north. She has a better head for business than I have."
"That may be," said Mr. Mallandine, smiling at him. "But she is not old enough to be married."
"She will be nineteen on her next birthday, sir."
"What a pertinacious young man you are. Her next birthday is nearly a year off. She shall not take the cares of a husband and a household until she is twenty."
"That means two years, rector. What am I to do with myself all that time?" Sir Hector asked ruefully.
"Do as other young men do. Isn't there sport enough and travel enough for such as you? Go to Canada, to the North Pole, to the Pamirs, over the roof of the world. I thought no young man of spirit was satisfied till he had crossed the Pamirs, or shot lions in Bechuanaland."