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"I wish I was sure that Vernon was good enough for her." Frank looked up quickly. "I don't think anybody is quite good enough for Jean; but Lucas Vernon is really a deuced fine fellow." Mr. Walkingshaw still seemed doubtful. "A bit lazy, I'm afraid." "I assure you he's not," said Frank. "He works, sir, like the very dickens." "He can't sell his pictures," replied his father.
In fact, he was reminded unpleasantly of the riotous people he had heard of who passed away in company with a pint of champagne and a cigar. This sort of thing would really not do. "About my will, Andrew," said his father's voice. He turned with remarkable alacrity and a forgiving eye. At once he was the deferential offspring. "You'll find you're left very well off," continued Mr. Walkingshaw.
He had finished the Scotsman and begun a conversation with his betrothed in a gently facetious vein, but it took him not a moment to adjust his features to the rigidity of an urn, and save for the faint squeaking of his boots, he ascended the stairs with noiseless solemnity. He found Mr. Walkingshaw propped up on pillows and breathing heavily.
The third is slowly making your name by the sweat of your brow, and selling your pictures when you are fifty-five to people who never recognized their merit till they had been told you were famous." "Well," said Hillary, "that gives you a biggish target." "Does it? I have no popular knack; I lack the conjurer's instincts; and I don't mean to wait for Jean Walkingshaw till I am fifty-five."
"No no, he won't! That horrible beast will see that he doesn't!" Miss Walkingshaw started nervously. "You're not meaning the nurse?" "I mean that ugh! that Andrew!" A bright pink spot appeared in each of Miss Walkingshaw's cheeks. But the widow was too agitated to observe either them or the horrified stare with which she greeted this outburst. "I believe he would kill him to spite me!"
Walkingshaw and his son were residing at the Hotel Gigantique, that stately new pile in Piccadilly, so styled, it is understood, from the bills presented when you leave. On the morning after his evening spent with Charlie Munro, they met as usual at breakfast. Fortunately, the state of Mr. Walkingshaw's health did not in the least seem to justify the forebodings of his friend.
Walkingshaw rose to indicate that the interview was at an end; but the artist's endurance ended first. "Mr. Walkingshaw! Did you ever make anything in your life?" The W.S. stared at him. "I have made most of what I possess, sir." "Pooh! You're talking of money. Does your mind never run on anything but money? I mean, have you ever made a hat or a shoe, or a book or a picture, or even a cheese?
A luggage-laden cab clattered over the granite cubes and passed out of the ring of tall mansions and the shadow of the stately trees within the garden. The career of Heriot Walkingshaw, W.S., was ended, and shocked respectability could lower again her up-rolled eyes and see nothing more outrageous than a prowling cat. May her troubles always end as happily!
Of course the wines were unexceptionable, while the company recognized itself as a homogeneous specimen of all that was best in the city with the Ramornies of Pettigrew thrown in. Here they were now, the whole twenty-two of them from old Lord Kilconquar, most eminent of judges, down to that rising young Hector Donaldson, bearing implicit testimony to the status of Andrew Walkingshaw.
How wounded he must feel by her callousness! But the most satisfactory consequence of all was the cessation of inquiries for any other Walkingshaw than Andrew. He considered himself justified in holding that this tacitly implied an admission that nobody could desire a better lawyer than he. Never, surely, was there a more signal triumph for the meek.
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