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Lady Ronnisglen having had a large proportion of sons to put out in life on very small means had learnt not to be fastidious, and held that the gentleman might ennoble the vocation instead of the vocation debasing the gentleman.
Mark came and knelt on one knee beside her and said: 'Will you let me work for you both, Lady Ronnisglen? I will do my best to find some. 'Ah! that is the point, my dear boy. I should have asked and wished for definite work, if you had come to me before that discovery of yours; and now it is a mere matter of necessity.
I don't see why Kirkaldy can't do the same. 'Not unless I had foreign languages at my tongue's end. Whereat the Canon groaned, and Mark had to work again through all the difficulties in the way of the more liberal professions; and the upshot was that his father agreed to drive over to Lescombe the next day and see Lady Ronnisglen.
'Dear old Lady Ronnisglen was delightful. If there were any tears, they were hers, and Lady Delmar was very cordial and affectionate. Of course Hugh and Mr. Dutton missed much that one would have liked in a wedding. I drove back with them afterwards, and it was very interesting to listen to their conversation about church matters.
'I believe I said I couldn't get a knitting pattern Miss Headworth was to send Lady Ronnisglen because she was in bed with a cold. What you and Blanche could contrive to make of a simple thing like that 'And Annaple! 'Well, but checking himself with a smile, 'we will not fight about that. I only hope it has not brought you into an awkward scrape, Nuttie.
'The same now, said Lady Ronnisglen, after some reckoning, 'but what does it lead to? 'Well nothing, I am afraid, said Mark; 'as you know, this is all I have to reckon upon. The younger children will have hardly anything from their mother, so that my father's means must chiefly go to them. 'And this agency is entirely dependent on your satisfying Mr. Egremont?
What a ride you have had! 'Why are they in such deep mourning? asked Mr. Dutton, after they had parted. 'Oh, did you not know? for good old Lady Ronnisglen. She had a bad fall about two years ago, and never left her bed again; and this last autumn she sank away. 'They have had a great deal of trouble, then. I saw the death of Canon Egremont in the Times soon after I went out to Australia.
Mark would have given worlds in his impatience to have matters settled between the two parents then and there; but Lady Ronnisglen had already warned him that this would not be possible, and assured him that it would be much wiser to prepare his father beforehand.
'But is it possible that Lady Ronnisglen did not object? said May. 'She seemed to think it preferable to driving pigs in the Texas, like her son Malcolm. 'Yes, but then that was the Texas. 'Oh May, May, I did not think you were such a goose! 'I should have thought the folly was in not being patient. Stick to your profession, and something must come in time.
'Yes, said Mark; then, with some hesitation, he added: 'Lady Ronnisglen, do you care whether I take to what people call a gentleman's profession? I could, of course, go on till I am called to the bar, and then wait for something to turn up; but that would be waiting indeed! Then in other directions I've taken things easy, you see, till I'm too old for examinations.
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