“His part?  Surely his part would have been to marry her by this time.”

“He has really no money.”  My friend was even more confidently able to report it than I had been.

“He ought to have got some, in seven years,” I audibly reflected.

“So I think she thinks.  There are some sorts of helplessness that are contemptible.  However, a small difference has taken place.  That’s why he won’t wait any longer.  His mother has come out, she has something—­a little—­and she’s able to assist him.  She’ll live with them and bear some of the expenses, and after her death the son will have what there is.”

“How old is she?” I cynically asked.

“I haven’t the least idea.  But it doesn’t, on his part, sound very heroic—­or very inspiring for our friend here.  He hasn’t been to America since he first went out.”

“That’s an odd way of adoring her,” I observed.

“I made that objection mentally, but I didn’t express it to her.  She met it indeed a little by telling me that he had had other chances to marry.”

“That surprises me,” I remarked.  “But did she say,” I asked, “that she had had?”

“No, and that’s one of the things I thought nice in her; for she must have had.  She didn’t try to make out that he had spoiled her life.  She has three other sisters and there’s very little money at home.  She has tried to make money; she has written little things and painted little things—­and dreadful little things they must have been; too bad to think of.  Her father has had a long illness and has lost his place—­he was in receipt of a salary in connexion with some waterworks—­and one of her sisters has lately become a widow, with children and without means.  And so as in fact she never has married any one else, whatever opportunities she may have encountered, she appears to have just made up her mind to go out to Mr. Porterfield as the least of her evils.  But it isn’t very amusing.”

“Well,” I judged after all, “that only makes her doing it the more honourable.  She’ll go through with it, whatever it costs, rather than disappoint him after he has waited so long.  It’s true,” I continued, “that when a woman acts from a sense of honour—!”

“Well, when she does?” said Mrs. Nettlepoint, for I hung back perceptibly.

“It’s often so extravagant and unnatural a proceeding as to entail heavy costs on some one.”

“You’re very impertinent.  We all have to pay for each other all the while and for each other’s virtues as well as vices.”

“That’s precisely why I shall be sorry for Mr. Porterfield when she steps off the ship with her little bill.  I mean with her teeth clenched.”

“Her teeth are not in the least clenched.  She’s quite at her ease now”—­Mrs. Nettlepoint could answer for that.

“Well, we must try and keep her so,” I said.

“You must take care that Jasper neglects nothing.”  I scarce know what reflexions this innocent pleasantry of mine provoked on the good lady’s part; the upshot of them at all events was to make her say:  “Well, I never asked her to come; I’m very glad of that.  It’s all their own doing.”