“I have it,” the man replied, his sallow cheek reddening. “I have it, and it’s for Etruria.”
“If this be true,” Mr. Colet said slowly, “I don’t know what to say, Toft.”
“You’ve said all that is needful, sir,” Toft replied. “It’s long I’ve looked forward to this. She’s yours, and she’ll not come to you empty-handed, and you’ll have no need to be ashamed of a wife that brings you a living. We’ll not trouble except to see her at odd times in the year. It will be enough for her mother and me that she’ll be a lady. She never was like us.”
“Hear the man!” cried Mrs. Toft between admiration and protest. “You’d suppose she wasn’t our child!”
But Mary went to him and gave him her hand. “That’s very fine, Toft,” she said. “I believe Etruria will be as happy as she is good, and Mr. Colet will have a wife of whom he may be proud. But Etruria will not be Etruria if she forgets her parents or your gift. Only you are sure that you are not deceiving yourself?”
“There’s my bank-book to show for half of it,” Toft replied. “The other half is as certain if I live three months!”
“Well, I declare!” Mrs. Toft cried. “If anybody’d told me yesterday that I’d have—’Truria, han’t you got a word to say?”
Etruria’s answer was to throw her arms round her father’s neck. Yet it is doubtful if the moment was as much to her as to the ungainly, grim—visaged man, who looked so ill at ease in her embrace.
The contrast between them was such that Mary hastened to relieve the sufferer. “Etruria will have more to say to Mr. Colet,” she said, “than to us. Suppose we leave them to talk it over.”
She saw the Tofts out after another word or two, and followed them. “Well, well, well!” said Mrs. Toft, when they stood in the hall. “I’m sure I wish that everybody was as lucky this day—if all’s true as Toft tells us.”