"Thank you, dear child. Nevertheless, I shall explain. In the first place, I have a very headstrong old mother at home, who considers me, in spite of my 58 years--yes, my dear, I am 58--not yet grown up. With her, there might--I do not positively say there would, but there might--be difficulties. In the second place, and to be quite frank with you and with myself, this is the main reason for doing things on the dot, as it were--I know that young people are to a certain extent impulsive and that a great many things may happen in a short time, and I want you just as you are now, before anything can happen to change you in any way. I confess freely, my dear, that I really want you very much, and that it has been harder than you may think, for me since I last talked with you to keep my resolve to let you quite alone so that you might think this matter out for yourself. That, having thought it out, you have not been afraid or ashamed to voluntarily let me know your decision, is to me convincing proof--though short-sighted people may think this paradoxical--of that modesty which is to me your most precious quality." Nervousness, more than he had ever imagined his socially-inured self could feel, was the cause of the latter half of this little speech of Sir William's being slightly formal. This marrying of a girl "of the people"--forty years distant from him and yet in her land of boy-and-girl--which had been easy enough to do in theory, in his study-chair, was a "bit of a pull" in actual execution. He had just finished speaking, when there came a knock at the door. "Ah!" he said, getting up, "I shouldn't wonder if that's our friend. That you, George?" "Yes--and I've jolly well run my legs off," exclaimed a voice, as a bustling and rather stout figure in clerical coat burst cyclonically into the room, dropped into a chair, and fanned itself with a flat-crowned black hat. "I couldn't get it out of my head, some way, that you are more in need of medical than spiritual attention at the present moment, Will. Now, calm yourself, old man, and let me have the whole story, and we'll examine the matter squarely and sensibly. I assume," the Reverend George glanced at Daisy, whose color was rising, "this is the young lady in the case. Jove, Will, I thought you had more bally sense, especially at your time of life--I did, really." Sir William looked at his ministerial friend open-mouthed; then, as the clergyman's meaning burst upon him, he sat up in his chair with a jerk. "Now, look here, George," he said, as the swivel creaked at the vigor with which he gripped the chair-arms, "I should hate our forty-five years of close friendship to end in fisticuffs. It will, though, I give you fair warning, if--if--what the devil do you think I've been doing, you ass! Must I repeat that, of our mutual choice--quite unforced by circumstances, if I must say so baldly--Miss Daisy Nixon and I have decided to be married."