“Pamela does not approve him?”
“Well, she’s got such superior ideas. But Parkins——”
“It is out of the question, Crichton. Dismiss the idea. Mrs. Crichton was a woman of higher social standing than yourself?”
The newsagent felt suffocation to be an imminent danger.
“She was the daughter of a lit’r’y gentleman——”
“Singular that she should have married you! Her father was badly in debt, possibly?”
“Look here——!”
“I say, possibly the late Mrs. Crichton’s father was financially indebted to you?”
Crichton, cowed:
“I pretty well kept him, for years!”