"Ambitious dreams!" repeated Mr. Cray. "She will at least occupy a position as good as yours, sir."
"As good as mine!" echoed the doctor. "But when, Mark?--when?" he added after a pause.
"In time."
"Ay--in time. There it is. How long must you wait for it?"
"We shall rub on until then, doctor. As others do."
"Mark, I do not think Caroline is one to rub on, as you call it, so smoothly as some might, unless fortune is smooth about her. Remember what your income is."
"It is two hundred a-year," said Mark, pushing his hair from his brow, and speaking with as much equanimity as though he had said two thousand. "But I thought perhaps you might be induced to increase it--for her sake."
Dr. Davenal pulled open the green Venetian blind and threw the window higher up, as if the air of the room were growing too hot for him. It was the window--or rather the compartment of it--nearest to the lane, and the doctor was fond of keeping it a little raised. Summer and winter would the passers-by see that window raised behind the green staves of the blind.
"Were I to double your income, Mark, and make it four hundred a-year--a thing which you have no right to expect me to do at present, or to ask me to do--it would still be an inadequate income for Caroline Davenal," resumed the doctor, closing the blind again, and setting his back against it. "I don't believe--it is my opinion, Mark, and I only give it you as such--that she is one to make the best of a small income, or to be happy on it."
Mr. Cray had caught up one of the doctor's pens, and stood opposite to him picking the feather-end of it off bit by bit. His attitude was a careless one, and his eyes were bent upon the pen, as if to pick those pieces off and litter the carpet were of more consequence than looking at Dr. Davenal. Mr. Cray was inclined to be easy over most things, to take life coolly, and he was characteristically easy over this.