"I think she'll be a little angry, Fred." There was a sudden tone of subdued confidence in the old man's voice as he made this suggestion, which, though it was by no means a customary tone, his son well understood. "Don't you think she will be;--eh, a little?"
"She shouldn't go on as she does with me about Clara," said the Captain.
"Ah,--I supposed there was something of that. Are you drinking port?"
"Of course I know that she means all that is good," said the son, passing back the bottle.
"You may say that, Fred;--and the best wife."
"But if she can't have her own way altogether--" Then the son paused, and the father shook his head.
"Of course she likes to have her own way," said Sir Anthony.
"But there are things which a man must decide for himself."
"I suppose there are," said Sir Anthony, not venturing to think what those things might be as regarded himself.
"I don't know what you want with marrying at all, Fred. You ought to be very happy as you are. By heavens, I don't know any one who ought to be happier. If I were you, I know--"
"If it's all settled, I suppose there's an end of it."
"My dear boy, she's been nagging at me, as you call it, for forty years. That's her way. The best woman in the world, as we were saying;--but that's her way. And it's the way with most of them. They can do anything if they keep it up;--anything. The best thing is to bear it if you've got it to bear. But why on earth you should go and marry, seeing that you're not the eldest son, and that you've got everything on earth that you want as a bachelor, I can't understand. I can't indeed, Fred. By heaven, I can't!" Then Sir Anthony gave a long sigh, and sat musing awhile, thinking of the club in London to which he belonged, but which he never entered;--of the old days in which he had been master of a bedroom near St. James's Street,--of his old friends whom he never saw now, and of whom he never heard, except as one and another, year after year, shuffled away from their wives to that world in which there is no marrying or giving in marriage. "Ah, well," he said, "I suppose we may as well go into the drawing-room. If it is settled, I suppose it is settled. But it really seems to me that your mother is trying to do the best she can for you. It really does."