“Carlotta, have mercy.  You are driving me crazy.  Pretty thing it would be for me to propose to you before I even got my sheepskin.  Jolly pleased your father would be, wouldn’t he, to be presented with a jobless, penniless son-in-law?”

“Nonsense!” said Carlotta crisply.  “It wouldn’t matter if you didn’t even have a fig leaf.  You wouldn’t be either jobless or penniless if you were his son-in-law.  He has pennies enough for all of us and enough jobs for you, which is quite sufficient unto the day.  Don’t be stiff and silly, Phil.  And don’t set your jaw like that.  I hate men who set their jaws.  It isn’t at all becoming.  I don’t say my dear misguided Daddy wouldn’t raise a merry little row just at first.  He often raises merry little rows over things I want to do, but in the end he always comes round to my way of thinking and wants precisely what I want.  Everything will be smooth as silk, I promise you.  I know what I am talking about.  I’ve thought it out very carefully.  I don’t make up my mind in a hurry, but when I do decide what I want I take it.”

“You can’t take this,” said Philip Lambert.

Carlotta drew back and stared, her violet eyes very wide open.  Never in all her twenty two years had any man said “can’t” to her in that tone.  It was a totally new experience.  For a moment she was too astounded even to be angry.

“What do you mean?” she asked a little limply.

“I mean I won’t take your father’s pennies nor hold down a pseudo-job I’m not fitted for, even for the sake of being his son-in-law.  And I won’t marry you until I am able to support you on the kind of job I am fitted for.”

“And may I inquire what that is?” demanded Carlotta sharply, recovering sufficiently to let the thorns she usually kept gracefully concealed prick out from among the roses.

Phil laughed shortly.

“Don’t faint, Carlotta.  I am eminently fitted to be a village store-keeper.  In fact that is what I shall be in less than two weeks.  I am going into partnership with my father.  The new sign Stuart Lambert and Son is being painted now.”

Carlotta gasped.

“Phil!  You wouldn’t.  You can’t.”

“Oh yes, Carlotta.  I not only could and would but I am going to.  It has been understood ever since I first went to college that when I was out I’d put my shoulder to the wheel beside Dad’s.  He has been pushing alone too long as it is.  He needs me.  You don’t know how happy he and Mums are about it.  It is what they have dreamed about and planned, for years.  I’m the only son, you know.  It’s up to me.”

“But, Phil!  It is an awful sacrifice for you.”  For once Carlotta forgot herself completely.

“Not a bit of it.  It is a flourishing concern—­not just a two-by-four village shop—­a real department store, doing real business and making real money.  Dad built it all up himself, too.  He has a right to be proud of it and I am lucky to be able to step in and enjoy the results of all his years of hard work.  I’m not fooling myself about that.  Don’t get the impression I am being a martyr or anything of the sort.  I most distinctly am not.”