In other words," he
added, with a short laugh, "ten thousand a year is the profession I
should choose."
"Ah," murmured the colonel, heaving a sigh, "I doubt that's a
profession we'd all of us like to practice as well as preach. What! no
more wine? Oh, ay, Edith, of course! Well, go to her, sir, if you must;
but when you come to my age you'll have found out which wears the best
--woman or the bottle. I'll join you presently, and maybe we'll see
what can be done about this marrying business."
So David went to Edith, and they had a clear hour together before they
heard the colonel's slippered tread hobbling through the hall. Just
before he opened the door, David had said: "I sometimes doubt whether
you wholly love me, after all." And she had answered:
"If I do not, it is because I sometimes feel as if you were not your
real self."
The colonel heard nothing of this odd bit of dialogue; but when he had
subsided, with his usual grunt, into his arm-chair beside the fire-
place, and Edith had brought him his foot-stool and his pipe, and pat
the velvet skull cap on his bald pate, he drew a long whiff of tobacco
smoke, and said:
"If you young folks want to set up housekeeping a month from to-day,
you can do it, for all I care.
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