He doesn't like your
father being an earl.'
'A man may be an earl and still a gentleman,' said Clarence, not
without a touch of coldness in his voice.
'I forgot to tell him that. But I don't think it would make any
difference. He says I shall only marry a man who works.'
'I am going to work, dearest,' said Clarence. 'I am going to work like a
horse. Something--I know not what--tells me I shall be rather good at
work. And one day when I--'
'Good-bye,' said Isabel, hastily. 'I hear papa coming.'
* * * * *
Clarence, as he had predicted, found no difficulty in obtaining
employment. He was signed on at once, under the name of Jones, by
Houndsditch Wednesday, the premier metropolitan club, and embarked at
once on his new career.
The season during which Clarence Tresillian kept goal for Houndsditch
Wednesday is destined to live long in the memory of followers of
professional football. Probably never in the history of the game has
there been such persistent and widespread mortality among the more
distant relatives of office-boys and junior clerks. Statisticians have
estimated that if all the grandmothers alone who perished between the
months of September and April that season could have been placed end to
end, they would have reached from Hyde Park Corner to the outskirts of
Manchester.
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