It must not, however, be concluded from this observation that Miss Margaret Slade was in love with anybody else. She was but seventeen at most; an age at which among well-conducted young persons no such idea enters the head, nor indeed, in her case, as one would think, had there been any opportunity for its entrance. She had been brought up in the country in seclusion, and only a few months ago, upon the death of Mrs. Erin, had been sent for by her uncle to keep house for him. His establishment in Norfolk Street, Strand, was a very simple one, and the company he entertained numbered none of these who, in the language of the day, were called ‘the votaries of Cupid.’ No young beaux ever so much as crossed the threshold. Mr. Erin’s visitors were all grave elderly gentlemen, more interested in a binding than in a petticoat, and preferring some old-world volume to a maiden in her spring-time. There was indeed, ‘though,’ as the song says, ‘it is hardly worth while to put that in,’ a son of Mr. Erin’s, of her own age, who dwelt in his father’s house. But the young man was out all day engaged in his professional avocation—that of a conveyancer’s clerk; and even when he returned at eve, mixed but little with the family. It seemed to Margaret that his father did not treat him very kindly.
There had been only one mention of him in the long coach journey from town. Mr. Dennis, addressing himself as usual to Margaret, when a chance offered of interrupting Mr. Erin’s interminable talk upon antiquarian subjects, had inquired after her cousin William Henry; and she had replied, with the least rose tint of a blush, that he had gone, she believed, on some business of his employer to Bristol. A statement which her uncle had corroborated, adding drily, ‘The boy has asked to have his holiday with us now instead of later in the year, so I have told him to come on to Stratford; he may be useful to me in collecting information upon Shakespearean matters.’
The remark scarcely breathed the spirit of a doating parent, but then that was not Mr. Erin’s way.
‘Your son has made a good choice of locality,’ said Mr. Dennis, in his rather ponderous manner. ‘It is not every young fellow who would choose Stratford-on-Avon to disport himself in, in preference to Tunbridge Wells, for instance; his taste for antiquities is certainly most remarkable. He will prove a chip of the old block, I’ll warrant,’ he added, with a side-long smile at Margaret. Margaret did not return his smile, though she did not frown as her uncle did. The fact was, though neither Margaret nor Mr. Dennis had the faintest idea of it, the latter could hardly have paid the old gentleman a more objectionable compliment.