with Mary without coming into sort of intimate contact with Mrs.
Carstairs, and giving a kind of domestic touch to their relations. You
see how that is. She wants to be fair and generous about it, but if she
is in love with him, that would be a little more than flesh and blood
could bear, I suppose. Then, as I say, there is the pig-headedness of
the child. Anyway, Uncle Elbert assures me that both those plans are
simply out of the question. So there is the situation. Mary won't come
to see him by herself. Mrs. Carstairs won't bring Mary to see him, and
she won't let him come to see Mary. Well, what remains?"
Peter said nothing. In a room overhead a manifestly improvised quartet
struck up "Should Auld Acquaintance be Forgot?" with great enthusiasm.
"You see there is only one thing. The old gentleman," said Varney, "has
brooded over the matter till it's broken him all up. He was in bed when
I was there just now. He asked me to go to Hunston and bring his
daughter to him. I told him that kidnapping was a little out of my line.
'Kidnapping is rather a harsh word,' he said. 'Yes,' said I, 'it's a
criminal word, I believe.' But--"
Peter looked up, interrupting. "Is this all straight? Is that really
what he wants you to do?"
"Naturally, Peter. Why not? You cling to the theory that such heroic
measures are entirely unnecessary? So did I till I had threshed the
whole thing up and down with Uncle Elbert for an hour and a half, trying
to suggest some alternative that didn't look so silly. Kindly get the
facts well into your head, will you? The man must pursue Mary's
affection either there or here, mustn't he? He can't do it there because
his wife won't let him. In order to do it here, one would say offhand
that Mary would have to be here, and since her mother declines to bring
her, it does look to me as if the job would have to be done by somebody
else. However, if my logic is wrong, kindly let your powerful--"
"I don't say it's wrong. I merely say that it sounds like a cross
between a modern pork-king's divorce suit and a seventeenth century
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