"
"Your wife plays, though!" John said sharply; and Archie replied:
"I have nothing to say on that score, except that Daisy takes care of
me. I should starve without her; for you know I was not brought up to
work, and it is too late now to begin, though I believe I'd be willing
to break stone on the highway, if I had the strength."
"Yes, yes, I see," the uncle interposed, a horrible dread seizing him
lest his nephew might do something beneath a McPherson unless he was
prevented.
"How much have you now?--how much money, I mean?"
"Just one shilling; and Daisy has, ten. If Mrs. Smithers had not invited
us here, Heaven only knows what we should have done, for Daisy will not
stay at Stoneleigh; so we travel from place to place, and she manages
somehow," Archie said: and his uncle rejoined:
"And makes her name a by-word and a reproach, as I suppose you know."
"Daisy is my wife!" Archie replied, with a dignity for which his uncle
menially respected him.
Just then the last dinner-bell rang, and rising from his seat, John put
his hand first in his vest pocket and then into Archie's hand, where he
left a twenty-pound note, saying rapidly:
"You needn't tell _her_--your wife I mean, or mine, either.
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