"Never!" came decidedly from Archie, "Do you think I would break my promise to my father? I have never touched a card, even for amusement, though I have wanted to so much, when I needed money sadly and saw how easily it was won at Monte Carlo."
"Your wife plays, though!" John said sharply; and Archie replied:
"I have nothing to say on that score, except that Daisy takes care of me. I should starve without her; for you know I was not brought up to work, and it is too late now to begin, though I believe I'd be willing to break stone on the highway, if I had the strength."
"Yes, yes, I see," the uncle interposed, a horrible dread seizing him lest his nephew might do something beneath a McPherson unless he was prevented.
"How much have you now?—how much money, I mean?"
"Just one shilling; and Daisy has, ten. If Mrs. Smithers had not invited us here, Heaven only knows what we should have done, for Daisy will not stay at Stoneleigh; so we travel from place to place, and she manages somehow," Archie said: and his uncle rejoined:
"And makes her name a by-word and a reproach, as I suppose you know."
"Daisy is my wife!" Archie replied, with a dignity for which his uncle menially respected him.
Just then the last dinner-bell rang, and rising from his seat, John put his hand first in his vest pocket and then into Archie's hand, where he left a twenty-pound note, saying rapidly:
"You needn't tell her—your wife I mean, or mine, either. A man may do as he likes occasionally."