Haw gave Laura an engagement ring
of old gold, with a great blazing diamond bulging out of it. There was
little talk about the matter, however, for it was Haw's wish that all
should be done very quietly. Nearly all his evenings were spent at
Elmdene, where he and Laura would build up the most colossal schemes of
philanthropy for the future. With a map stretched out on the table in
front of them, these two young people would, as it were, hover over the
world, planning, devising, and improving.
"Bless the girl!" said old McIntyre to his son; "she speaks about it as
if she were born to millions. Maybe, when once she is married, she
won't be so ready to chuck her money into every mad scheme that her
husband can think of."
"Laura is greatly changed," Robert answered; "she has grown much more
serious in her ideas."
"You wait a bit!" sniggered his father. "She is a good girl, is Laura,
and she knows what she is about. She's not a girl to let her old dad go
to the wall if she can set him right. It's a pretty state of things,"
he added bitterly: "here's my daughter going to marry a man who thinks
no more of gold than I used to of gun-metal; and here's my son going
about with all the money he cares to ask for to help every ne'er-do-well
in Staffordshire; and here's their father, who loved them and cared for
them, and brought them both up, without money enough very often to buy a
bottle of brandy.
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