“I should have gone ages ago,” she would say, “if it hadn’t been for Auntie, and you know what she is.”
And Henry secretly thanked Heaven for Auntie, for, knowing nothing whatever about the stage or stage-folk, he very properly disapproved of both.
Auntie, it appears, was the stumbling-block to many joyous enterprises. It was she who insisted that he must earn fully two hundred a year before she would consent to the match.
“Mary wants any amount of looking after,” she said, “and you’re not old enough yet to look after yourself.”
A premature marriage was thus averted, and the young lovers consoled themselves by privately condemning Auntie’s tyranny and common-sense.
Then one day Auntie died, unexpectedly and inconspicuously on the horsehair sofa in the parlour, and Mary Kent was left alone in the world to work out her own destiny.
It might be imagined that Henry embraced the opportunity to make her his wife then and there, but Auntie had left, by way of a legacy, a certain amount of the one-time detested common-sense. Reviewing his financial position by the clear light of before-breakfast sunshine, he was forced to admit that a salary that barely sufficed to satisfy his own needs would inevitably prove insufficient for two. He conveyed this weighty decision to the ears of his adored one, who, deprived of the same clarity of vision that had been given to him, accepted it as a token of waning affection.
“If you can’t keep me,” she sobbed, “then I’ll keep both of us.”
Sorely perplexed, he asked her what she meant.
“I shall go on the stage and earn a huge salary, and then perhaps you’ll be sorry.”