i88 THE HAUGHTYSHIRE HUNT. 



love for Penelope, and also of his own exceedingly small 

 income. At the same moment he offered to at once resign 

 his present happy-go-lucky style of life, and try anew his 

 fortune at the Bar. 



Septimus pursed up his mouth, and thrust his hands deep 

 into his trousers pockets. 



"Ha, h'm, and how do you propose to set up an establish- 

 ment and keep a wife, hey ? What's your idea ? " 



Now, this extremely commercial way of looking at things 

 was rather embarrassing to Mr. Dennison. Birth, position, 

 youth, good looks, the profession of a gentleman, all these 

 might well and reasonably have been thrown into the balance, 

 but then it did not lie in his own mouth to put such matters 

 forward. The worthy inventor of Binkie's Composites asked no 

 question as to moral fitness ; that never seemed to enter into 

 his head. All he asked was, virtually, and put into plain 

 language: "How many golden sovereigns have you got?" 

 And Mr. Binkie was not alone in this. The vast majority of 

 the fathers of to-day never ask a man what he is ; they always 

 ask him what he has; it seems to be such a much more 

 interesting subject. 



Of course, poor Pionald's reply to this direct question was 

 rather nebulous, and equally of course it never occurred to 

 Mr. Septimus Binkie that, were he to allow his daughter a 

 few hundreds, out of his many thousands a year — to give her, 

 in fact, an income equal to that which Eonald Dennison had 

 himself, that he could make two worthy young people 

 supremely happy; and so the interview ended in the 

 way such interviews usually do end, and Eonald rose to 

 leave, not in the least intending to give up Penelope, but 



