Part 15 (1/2)

'No, an allowance is made to me out of the estate.'

'An allowance which ends on her marriage, if she marries with your consent?'

'Yes, it ends then. Her uncle trusted me a deal more than he trusted Barbara. She was strange from a child. Fond of the men,' as if that were an unusual and unbecoming form of philanthropy.

'I see, and she being an heiress, the testator was anxious to protect her youth and innocence?'

Mrs. Nicholson merely sniffed, but the sniff was affirmative, though sarcastic.

'Her property, I suppose, is considerable? I do not ask from impertinent curiosity, nor for exact figures. But, as a question of business, may we call the fortune considerable?'

'Most people do. It runs into six figures.'

Merton, who had no mathematical head, scribbled on a piece of paper. The result of his calculations (which I, not without some fever of the brow, have personally verified) proved that 'six figures' might be anything between 100,000_l_. and 999,000_l_. 19_s_. 11.75_d_.

'Certainly it is very considerable,' Merton said, after a few minutes pa.s.sed in arithmetical calculation. 'Am I too curious if I ask what is the source of this opulence?'

'”Wilton's Panmedicon, or Heal All,” a patent medicine. He sold the patent and retired.'

Merton shuddered.

'It would be Pammedic.u.m if it could be anything,' he thought, 'but it can't, linguistically speaking.'

'Invaluable as a subterfuge,' said Mrs. Nicholson, obviously with an indistinct recollection of the advertis.e.m.e.nt and of the properties of the drug.

Merton construed the word as 'febrifuge,' silently, and asked: 'Have you taken the young lady much into society: has she had many opportunities of making a choice? You are dissatisfied with the choice, I understand, which she has made?'

'I don't let her see anybody if I can help it. Fire and powder are better kept apart, and she is powder, a minx! Only a fisher or two comes to the Perch, that's the inn at Walton-on-Dove, and _they_ are mostly old gentlemen, pottering with their rods and things. If a young man comes to the inn, I take care to trapes after her through the nasty damp meadows.'

'Is the young lady an angler?'

'She is--most unwomanly I call it.'

Merton's idea of the young lady rose many degrees. 'You said the young lady was ”strange from a child, very strange. Fond of the men.” Happily for our s.e.x, and for the world, it is not so very strange or unusual to take pity on us.'

'She has always been queer.'

'You do not hint at any cerebral disequilibrium?' asked Merton.

'Would you mind saying that again?' asked Mrs. Nicholson.

'I meant nothing wrong _here_?' Merton said, laying his finger on his brow.

'No, not so bad as that,' said Mrs. Nicholson; 'but just queer. Uncommon.

Tells odd stories about--nonsense. She is wearing with her dreams. She reads books on, I don't know how to call it--Tipsy-cake, Tipsicakical Search. Histories, _I_ call it.'

'Yes, I understand,' said Merton; 'Psychical Research.'

'That's it, and Hyptonism,' said Mrs. Nicholson, as many ladies do.