"He's been telling _me_ about it too," said Grafton laughing. "You know, I'm not at all certain, Cara, that we shan't have trouble with that pair of lunatics. Nobody can help liking them, but as a Vicar and Vicaress of a respectable country parish I don't quite see them." "Oh, I do," she said. "He is just one big loving heart, and he hasn't time to think about all the little things that most of us make such a fuss about. And she has thrown herself into it all because she loves him. But she's just like anybody else, and she'll keep him in order." "Do you know the story of their marriage?" he asked her. "She told me that the fathers of both of them had lost all their money before they died, and that their relations on both sides had been very much against their marriage." "Their fathers were partners in business, and a third partner let them in horribly, and bolted. Before they had time to pull things together both of them died, within a month of one another. Their mothers were both dead too, and they are both only children. It's an extraordinary series of coincidences. The relations on each side accused the other of rank carelessness, and there must have been great carelessness somewhere, though they haven't discovered yet where it was. I dare say they were both happy-go-lucky gentlemen, if they were anything like their offspring, and one was as bad as the other. So both those young people being in the same box they thought the best thing they could do would be to get married." "She was in a furniture shop for a year after her father died." "Yes; till he'd managed to save twenty pounds out of his screw to get something to start on. An old aunt of his came round by that time, but he wouldn't take a bob off her. Well, I dare say they've been as happy as most people on his hundred and fifty a year." "Isn't it wonderful? But they'll be much better off now. You will buy those things for them, won't you, darling?" "No, Cara, I won't." "Dad, darling! Why not?" "I've told you, haven't I?" She thought for a moment, and then kissed him. "Yes, I see," she said. "You're a clear-sighted old Daddy. I expect you've been itching to do it all the time." "Well, I have, to tell you the truth," he said. "I should have liked to tell Mercer to make up his beastly bill and send it in to me. But I saw it wouldn't do. They wouldn't like to be dependent on us, and they wouldn't like to say no. I'll tell you what I've had to do, though, and it's a good thing that I've had a lucky stroke lately that will cover it. I've had to promise the Bishop to endow the blooming living up to the tune I was ready to pay Prescott. He wouldn't have taken it otherwise." In her happy state of never having had occasion to consider money, she did not realise the magnitude of this obligation. "You're a little patron of the Church, darling," she said, "and they'll put you in all the papers." "That's what I'm afraid of," he said. "I've told the old boy to keep it dark."