“Dick, don’t make a beast of yourself!” said Amelia.  Upon this Dick only smiled.

He continually twiddled his hat for three or four minutes, and then rose up straight.  “I suppose,” said he, “I had better go up-stairs and talk to the old man.  I seed Miss Sophie taking a pick-up to him, so I suppose he’ll be able to talk.”

“Why shouldn’t he talk?” said Mrs. Carroll.  But she quite understood what Mr. Juniper’s words were intended to imply.

“It don’t always follow,” said Juniper, as he walked out of the room.

“Now there’ll be a row in the house;—­you see if there isn’t!” said Amelia.  But Mrs. Carroll expressed her opinion that the man must be the most ungrateful of creatures if he kicked up a row on the present occasion.  “I don’t know so much about that, mamma,” said Amelia.

Mr. Juniper walked up-stairs with heavy, slow steps, and knocked at the door of the marital chamber.  There are men who can’t walk up-stairs as though to do so were an affair of ordinary life.  They perform the task as though they walked up-stairs once in three years.  It is to be presumed that such men always sleep on the ground-floor, though where they find their bed-rooms it is hard to say.  Mr. Juniper was admitted by Sophie, who stepped out as he went in.  “Well, old fellow!  B.—­and—­S., and plenty of it.  That’s the ticket, eh?”

“I did have a little headache this morning.  I think it was the cigars.”

“Very like,—­and the stuff as washed ’em down.  You haven’t got any more of the same, have you?”

“I’m uncommonly sorry,” said the sick man, rising up on his elbow, “but I’m afraid there is not.  To tell the truth, I had the deuce of a job to get this from the old woman.”

“It don’t matter,” said the impassive Mr. Juniper, “only I have been down among the ’orses at the yard till my throat is full of dust.  So your lady has been and seen her brother?”

“Yes; she’s done that.”

“Well?”

“He ain’t altogether a bad un—­isn’t old Grey.  Of course he’s an attorney.”

“I never think much of them chaps.”

“There’s good and bad, Juniper.  No doubt my brother-in-law has made a little money.”

“A pot of it,—­if all they say’s true.”

“But all they say isn’t true.  All they say never is true.”

“I suppose he’s got something?”

“Yes, he’s got something.”

“And how is it to be?”

“He’s given the girl four hundred pounds on the nail,”—­upon this Mr. Juniper turned up his nose,—­“and fifty pounds for her wedding-clothes.”

“He’d better let me have that.”

“Girls think so much of it,”—­Mr. Juniper only shook his head,—­“and, upon my word, it’s more than she had a right to expect.”

“It ain’t what she had a right to expect; but I,”—­here Mr. Carroll shook his head,—­“I said five hundred pounds out, and I means to hold by it.  That’s about it.  If he wants to get the girl married, why—­he must open his pocket.  It isn’t very much that I’m asking.  I’m that sort of a fellow that, if I didn’t want it, I’d take her without a shilling.”