"What's that? Rubbish!"
He looked down again. It was a promising beginning.
"It may be rubbish, but it is a simple fact. I am engaged to be married."
"How old are you?"
"I should have thought you would have known my age. I was eighteen last birthday."
"In another ten years it will be time enough to think of nonsense of that sort."
"Ten years! I am going to be married in six weeks from to-day."
"Be so good as not to interrupt me when I'm reading with nonsensical observations of that kind."
That was the form my father's congratulations took. It may easily be imagined what trouble we had with him. He could not be brought to regard things seriously. It was not merely because he thought I was too young; if I had been fifty it would have been exactly the same. It was simply because he hated being bothered. And yet when, after repeated trials, it was driven home to his understanding that I was going to be married, and that George was a respectable person, he surprised me by the generosity which he all at once displayed. One morning, as he was leaving the breakfast-table to start for the City, he slipped a piece of paper into my hand.
"That's to buy clothes."