"Oh, bother!" interrupted Sir John, having no counter argument particularly at hand. "That goes for nothing. What are your prospects?" "They are not great. Perhaps I ought to say that I have no prospects as yet. But, sir----" "Now come! that's honest. No prospects! And yet you must go making love to my daughter." "I have not done that, sir, in one sense--'made love.' Hardly a word, I think, has passed between myself and Miss Whitney that you might not have heard. But we have, notwithstanding, been fully aware of the state of each other's heart----" "The state of each other's fiddlestick," spluttered Sir John. "A nice pair of you, I must say! And pray, what did you think it would come to?" "What Miss Whitney may have thought I have not presumed to ask. For myself, I confess I am cherishing hopes for the future. It is some little time now since I have been wishing to speak to you, Sir John: and I intended, if you were so kind as not to entirely reject me, to write to my father, Dr. Leafchild, and lay the whole case before him. I think he can help me later if he will; and I certainly believe he will be only too glad to do it." "Help you to what?" "To a living." "And, bless my heart and mind, how long do you suppose you might have to wait? A dozen years. Twenty years, for all you know. The curate who was here before you, poor Bell, had been waiting more than twenty years for one. It came to him last year, and he was forty-seven years old." Mr. Leafchild could say nothing to this. "And a fine living it is, now he has it!" went on Sir John. "No, no, sir: Helen Whitney cannot be dragged into that kind of fate." "I should be the last to drag her, or wish to drag her into it. Believe that, Sir John. But, if I had a good living given to me, then I should like her to share it. And I think that my father would perhaps allow me some private means also, for Helen's sake. He has money, and could do it." "But all those fancies and notions are just so many vapours, clouds up in the sky, and no better, don't you see! You young men are sanguine and foolish; you lose sight of facts in fallacies. We must look at what is, not at what might be. Why, you are not yet even a priest!" "No. I shall be ordained to that in a few months' time." "And then, I suppose, you will either remain here, or get a curacy elsewhere. And your income will be that of a curate--a hundred pounds a-year, all told. Some curates get but fifty." "True. We are poorly paid." "And that may go on till you are forty or fifty years of age! And yet, in the face of it, you ask me to let you have my daughter. Now, Mr. Leafchild, you are either a simpleton yourself, or you must think I am one," added Sir John, rising to end the interview, which had been to him one of thorough discomfort. "And I'm sure I hope you'll pick up a little common sense, young man, and I shall order Miss Helen to pick some up too. There, that's all."