“And why should he not be asked to his dinner?” said Mr. Ogilvie. “You go beyond my understanding. Ronald Sutherland, a lad that I have known since he was that high, and his father and his grandfather before him. I think the woman is going out of her wits. Because you’re marrying Effie to one of those rich upstarts, am I never to ask a decent lad here?”
“You and your decent lads!” said his wife; she was at the end of her Latin, as the French say, and of her patience too. “Just listen to me, Robert,” she added, with that calm of exasperation which is sometimes so impressive. “I’m marrying Effie, since you like to put it that way (and it’s a great deal more than any of her relations would have had the sense to do), to the best match on all this side of Scotland. I’m not saying this county; there’s nobody in the county that is in any way on the same footing as Fred. There is rank, to be sure, but as for money he could buy them all up, and settlements just such as were never heard of. Well, that’s what I’m doing, if you give me the credit of it. But there’s just one little hindrance, and that’s Ronald Sutherland. If he’s to come here on the ground of your knowing him since he was that high, and being Eric’s friend—that’s to say, like a son of the house—I have just this to say, Robert, that I will not answer for Effie, and this great match may not take place after all.”
“What do you mean, you daft woman? Do you mean to tell me there has been any carrying on, any correspondence——”
“Have some respect to your own child, Robert, if not to your wife. Am I a woman to allow any carrying on? And Effie, to do her justice, though she has very little sense in some respects, is not a creature of that kind; and mind, she never heard a word of yon old story. No, no, it’s not that. But it’s a great deal worse—it’s just this, that there’s an old kindness, and they know each other far better than either Effie or you or me knows Fred Dirom. They are the same kind of person, and they have things to talk about if once they begin. And, in short, I cannot tell you all my drithers—but I’m very clear on this. If you want that marriage to come off, which is the best match that’s been made in Dumfriess-shire for generations, just you keep Ronald Sutherland at arm’s length, and take care you don’t ask him here to his dinner every second day.”
“I am not so fond of having strangers to their dinner,” said Mr. Ogilvie, with great truth. “It’s very rarely that the invitation comes from me. And as for your prudence and your wisdom and your grand managing, it might perhaps be just as well, on the whole, for Effie if she had two strings to her bow.”
Mrs. Ogilvie uttered a suppressed shriek in her astonishment. “For any sake! what, in the name of all that’s wonderful, are you meaning now?”
“You give me no credit for ever meaning anything, or taking the least interest, so far as I can see, in what’s happening in my own family,” said the head of the house, standing on his dignity.
“Oh, Robert, man! didn’t I send the young man to you, and would not listen to him myself! I said her father is the right person: and so you were, and very well you managed it, as you always do when you will take the trouble. But what is this about a second string to her bow?”
Mr. Ogilvie se faisait prier. He would not at first relinquish the pride of superior knowledge. At last, when his wife had been tantalized sufficiently, he opened his budget.
“The truth is, that things, very queer things, are said in London about Dirom’s house. There is a kind of a hint in the money article of the Times. You would not look at that, even if we got the Times. I saw it yesterday in Dumfries. They say ‘a great firm that has gone largely into mines of late’—and something about Basinghall Street, and a hope that their information may not be correct, and that sort of thing—which means more even than it says.”