Page:The Confessions of a Well-Meaning Woman.djvu/292

 scraping that we made both ends meet. Many young men in Will’s position would have put themselves up to auction, as it were, and married the first rich woman who came their way. Goodness me, my boy had a big enough choice! First of all Hilda, and he resigned his claims there to my nephew Culroyd; then the South American widow, but he very quickly saw how unsuitable that would be; and you may say—without any unkindness—that my niece Phyllida was waiting all the time for him to drop the handkerchief and only consented to marry Hilary Butler when the other thing was out of the question. Unfortunately you can’t please everybody, and Will was old-fashioned enough to desire a wife with whom he could be in love and to shut his ears to all the lures of money. . . Money? A man of his ability can always earn money, and our only difficulty was to know where to start. He contemplated la haute finance for a while, but was repelled by the prospect of having to work with men like Sir Adolf Erckmann; then he explored the possibilities of Mr. Surdan’s shipyards, but this for some reason was not to his taste. Now I truly honestly believe that he has found his métier. . ..

While he was still undecided about his career, I was reluctant to part with the house in Mount Street, though for many years it had really been