ying about, Jimmy? Is it anything that I can help you with?"

He shook his head. "There's no trouble, really there isn't. What can
there be? Vera and I both know our own minds, and in another year's time
I ought to be making a decent income. You will be able to point us out
proudly as a couple whose happiness you secured."

He tried to speak lightly, but he did not convince her in the least;
though she put on a smile when Vera came out again.

"Jimmy hasn't written to your father yet, Vera," she said. "You had
better take him into the library now, and make him do it at once, or
else he'll keep on putting it off. I know his ways of old. He lacks all
his family's instinct for business-like promptitude. Now, his brother
Walter probably had all such letters ready, or at least drafted out,
before he proposed. Jimmy has none of the Grierson ways, as May will
doubtless tell you."

Vera frowned slightly. Sometimes Ethel's flippant speech jarred on her a
little. Family matters are treated as serious things in the household of
a canon who has relatives possessing influence; moreover, it was by no
means pleasant to be told that Jimmy was different from the Griersons.
It was almost an implied slur on his respectability. However, before she
had time to make any protest, Ethel had moved off, and Jimmy changed the
current of her thoughts by suggesting that the letter to Canon Farlow
had better be written at once, and she led the way into the library,
well pleased at the idea.

Possibly because the letter to Lalage would be so terribly difficult to
compose, Jimmy found that to his future father-in-law comparatively
easy. There was not much feeling in it perhaps--even Vera, who read it
with partial eyes, could not help noting the fact--but, after all, it
was in a sense a matter of business; and so she was able to find
consolation in its clear, incisive phrasing. She was glad when it was
finished, more glad still when they had strolled down to the pillar box
outside the gates, and dropped the envelope in it. Their relations were
on a definite footing now, and she had little doubt that her father
would be well pleased. Of course, Jimmy was still a poor man; he had
been perfectly frank on that point; but still he was making a name, and,
as he said, he would now have a still stronger incentive to work.
Altogether, she was quite satisfied with her prospects, and convinced
that she had done a wise thing in saying "Yes." Perhaps, somewhere