“And you have been getting up in your brain the Utopian scheme that Sir Robert Tenby would put this curate into the living! and want me to propose it to him! Is that what you mean, young man?”
“Yes, sir. Sir Robert would listen to you. You are friendly with him, and he is in town. Won’t you, please, do it?”
“Not if I know it, Johnny Ludlow. Solicit Robert Tenby to give the living to a man I never heard of: a man I know nothing about! What notions you pick up!”
“Mr. Lake is so good and so painstaking,” I urged. “He has been working all these years——”
“You have said all that before,” interrupted old Brandon, shifting the silk handkerchief on his head more to one side. “I can’t answer for it, you know. And, if I could, I should not consider myself justified in troubling Sir Robert.”
“What I thought was this, sir: that, if he got to know all Mr. Lake is, he might be glad to give him the living: glad of an opportunity to do a good and kind act. I did not think of your asking him to give the living; only to tell him of Mr. Lake, and what he has done, and been. He lives only in Upper Brook Street. It would not be far for you to go, sir.”
“I should not go if he lived here at the next door, Johnny Ludlow: should not be justified in going on such an errand. Go yourself.”
“I don’t like to, sir.”
“He wouldn’t eat you; he’d only laugh at you. Robert Tenby would excuse in a silly lad what he might deem impertinence from me. There, Johnny; let it end.”
And there it had to end. When old Brandon took up an idea he was hard as adamant.