And Neil had been worried and exasperated and wrought upon until he was
half beside himself. His mother had wished him to accompany her and
Blanche to the house of a friend near Edinburgh, and when he refused,
saying he preferred to go to Stoneleigh, there had been a jolly row, as
he expressed it, and his mother had charged him with his preference for
the daughter of that bold adventuress, and had told him decidedly that
if he ever dared to marry her he should never touch a shilling of her
money either during her life-time or after, for once assured of the
marriage she would so arrange her matters that he would be as great a
beggar as Archie McPherson himself.
"A family of paupers!" she said, scornfully. "Your father has nothing to
give you; absolutely nothing, and you can yourself judge, how, with your
tastes and habits, you will like living at Stoneleigh with two meals a
day, as I hear they sometimes do, blacking your own boots and building
your own fires."
Here Neil winced, for he knew very well that he had no fancy for
poverty, even if Bessie shared it with him But he told his mother he
had, and consigned Blanche's ten thousand a year to a place where the
gold might be melted, and said he loved Bessie McPherson better than
anything in life, and should marry her if he pleased in spite of a
hundred mothers.
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