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Page 31
"To India!" exclaimed Eldrick. "What are you going to do there?"
"Sir John Standridge," said Collingwood, mentioning a famous legal
luminary of the day, "is going out to Hyderabad to take certain
evidence, and hold a sort of inquiry, in a big case, and I'm going with
him as his secretary and assistant--I was in his chambers for two years,
you know. We leave next week, and we shall not be back until the end of
April."
"Lucky man!" remarked the solicitor. "Well, when you return, don't
forget what I've said. Come back!--you'll not regret it. Come and settle
down. Bye-the-bye, you're not engaged, are you?"
"Engaged?" said Collingwood. "To what--to whom--what do you mean?"
"Engaged to be married," answered Eldrick coolly. "You're not? Good! If
you want a wife, there's Miss Mallathorpe. Nice, clever girl, my
boy--and no end of what Barford folk call brass. The very woman for
you."
"Do you Barford people ever think of anything else but what you call
brass?" asked Collingwood, laughing.
"Sometimes," replied Eldrick. "But it's generally of something that
nothing but brass can bring or produce. After all, a rich wife isn't a
despicable thing, nowadays. You've seen this young lady?"
"I've been there once," asserted Collingwood.
"Go again--before you leave," counselled Eldrick. "You're just the right
man. Listen to the counsels of the wise! And while you're in India,
think well over my other advice. I tell you there's a career for you,
here in the North, that you'd never get in town."
Collingwood left him and went out--to find a motorcar and drive off to
Normandale Grange, not because Eldrick had advised him to go, but
because of his promise to Harper and Nesta Mallathorpe. And once more he
found Nesta alone, and though he had no spice of vanity in his
composition it seemed to him that she was glad when he walked into the
room in which they had first met.
"My mother is out--gone to town--to the mill," she said. "And Harper is
knocking around the park with a gun--killing rabbits--and time. He'll be
in presently to tea--and he'll be delighted to see you. Are you going to
stay in Barford much longer?"
"I'm going up to town this evening--seven o'clock train," answered
Collingwood, watching her keenly. "All my business is finished now--for
the present."
"But--you'll be coming back?" she asked.
"Perhaps," he said. "I may come back--after a while."
"When you do come back," she went on, a little hurriedly, "will you come
and see us again? I--it's difficult to explain--but I do wish Harper
knew more men--the right sort of men. Do you understand?"
"You mean--he needs more company?"
"More company of the right kind. He doesn't know many nice men. And he
has so little to occupy him. He's no head for business--my mother
attends to all that--and he doesn't care much about sport--and when he
goes into Barford he only hangs about the club, and, I'm afraid, at two
or three of the hotels there, and--it's not good for him."
"Can't you get him interested in anything?" suggested Collingwood. "Is
there nothing that he cares about?"
"He never did care about anything," replied Nesta with a sigh. "He's
apathetic! He just moves along. Sometimes I think he was born half
asleep, and he's never been really awakened. Pity, isn't it?"
"Considering everything--a great pity," agreed Collingwood. "But--he's
provided for."
Nesta gave him a swift glance.
"It might have been a good deal better for him if he hadn't been
provided for!" she said. "He'd have just had to do something, then.
But--if you come back, you'll come here sometimes?"
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