“I’d do anything to make you happy, Arthur! But I don’t believe,” with a sigh, “that whatever I did your uncle would pay the money.”
“Is it his money or yours?”
“Why, of course, Arthur, I thought that you knew that it was your father’s.” She was very simple, and her pride was touched.
“And now it is yours. And I suppose that some day—I hope it will be a long day, mother—it will be mine. Believe me, you’ve only to write to my uncle and tell him that you have decided to call it up, and he will pay it as a matter of course. Shall I write the letter for you to sign?”
Mrs. Bourdillon looked piteously at him. She was very, very unwilling to comply, but what was she to do? Between love of him and fear of the Squire, what was she to do? Poor woman, she did not know. But he was with her, the Squire was absent, and she was about to acquiesce when a last argument occurred to her. “But you are forgetting,” she said, “if your uncle takes offence, and I’m sure he will, he’ll come between you and Josina.”
“Well, that is his look-out.”
“Arthur! You don’t mean that you’ve changed your mind, and you so fond of her? And the girl heir to Garth and all her father’s money!”
“I say nothing about it,” Arthur declared. “If he chooses to come between us that will be his doing, not mine.”
“But Garth!” Mrs. Bourdillon was altogether at sea. “My dear boy, you are not thinking! Why, Lord ha’ mercy on us, where would you find such another, young and pretty and all, and Garth in her pocket? Why, if it were only on Jos’s account you’d be mad to quarrel with him.”
“I’m not going to quarrel with him,” Arthur replied sullenly. “If he chooses to quarrel with me, well, she’s not the only heiress in the world.”