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"You'll soon find one if you make up your mind to it. My plan is first make up your mind to get married and then look for the girl—not the other way round, which is what most men do, and leads to all kinds of trouble. Of course I know it isn't always convenient. But what's your special objection? Any entanglement? Don't be afraid to tell me. I know there's often a little woman in the way:"

Peter squirmed at his father's Victorian ideas of dissipation with their "little women." He'd be talking of "French dancers" next. . . .

"I haven't any entanglement, Sir."

"Then you take my words to heart. I don't ask you to marry for money, but marry where money is, as Shakespeare or somebody said."

§ 6

Peter found a refreshing solitude in the early hours of the next day. His mother and Doris breakfasted upstairs, his father had characteristically kept his promise to "be about tomorrow," and had actually ridden out before Peter appeared in the morning room at nine. Jenny, who was a lazy young woman, did not come down till he had finished, and Gervase, in one of those spasms of eccentricity which made Peter sometimes a little ashamed of him, had gone without breakfast altogether, and driven off in the Ford lorry to fetch his luggage, sustained by an apple.