And they are the most independent people in the world.
When his wife died, his sister, the widow of an Indian officer, bustled eastward, from a fashionable Welsh watering-place, just to satisfy herself, as she explained to her West-country friends, that he would not marry his cook before six months elapsed.

After that period she proposed to wash her hands of him.

She was accompanied by her only child, Miriam, who had just left school.
Six months later Septimus Marvin was called upon to give away his sister to a youthful brother officer of her late husband, which ceremony he performed with a sigh of relief audible in the farthest recess of the organ loft.

While the wedding-bells were still ringing, the bride, who was not dreamy or vague like her brother, gave Septimus to understand that he had promised to provide Miriam with a home--that he really needed a woman to keep things going at the rectory and to watch over the tender years of little Sep--and that Miriam's boxes were packed.
Septimus had no recollection of the promise.

And his sister was quite hurt that he should say such a thing as that on her wedding day and spoil everything.