At the earliest opportunity, when Millwood was able to look after the shop for a couple of hours—he had a bible of his own now, and read it with all the interest of one to whom its contents were new, declaiming passages aloud and committing them to memory—I ran up to town and saw Cartwright's brother. He was an abridged edition of the Quartermaster-Sergeant, only about five feet five high, and small featured; in the way of short men he took an assertive manner, and there was scarcely any opinion I offered during the early part of the interview that did not receive immediate contradiction. Perhaps he accentuated this attitude because, at the start, he said, "Oh yes, Miss Weston. The lady to whom my soldier brother wants to leave his money!" It was a time, you will remember, when we all bragged of relatives in the army; the little solicitor was not exempt, and one could see that he blamed himself for disclosing information concerning the will. I said promptly that I had no need of the Quartermaster-Sergeant's money, that I had enough of my own, that he would have done better to look after his parents. "They," remarked Cartwright's brother, "are under my charge." We came to the subject of the railway company's offer.
"Oh, no," he said, promptly, "your nephew is not going to agree to that. These folk never expect their first offer to be taken. This is a matter which will require correspondence and discussion, and consultations, and so forth, and so on."
"We don't want to run into too much expense for your so forth and so on."
"You will be troubled with no bill of costs in this matter," he said. "Any friend of my brother's has a special claim upon me."
I apologised, and we became more friendly. He told me his parents had made great sacrifices in regard to his preparation for the law, and that George had willingly agreed to this. He admitted there had been a period when one did not take much trouble to speak of a brother who had enlisted in the army; he remembered arguing the matter with George very seriously, and for some years they were not on speaking or writing terms; the war had promptly brought them together. I spoke of other conjuring tricks performed by the same medium. Of my nephew Herbert, stopped in his educational career. Of the Hilliers, and in particular of Muriel.
"But that ought not to be a difficult task," said the little man, across the table. "To bring those two together, I mean."
"It ought not to be difficult," I agreed, "but I can give you my word that it is."
"He is very much in love with her?"
"That's right."