I!
“Thank you—I am not a marrying man; but you will find them a pleasant family, apparently. Are there any more sisters?”
“No!—quite enough, too.”
“Nor brothers?”
“Not the ghost of one!”
“Perhaps,”—was it I, or some mocking imp speaking through my lips—“perhaps only the ghost of one. None now living, probably?”
“None at all that I ever heard of. So much the better; I shall have her more to myself. Heigho! it's an age till Tuesday.”
“You'd better go to your bed, and shorten the time, by ten hours.”
“So I will. Night, night, old fellow—as they teach little brats to say, on disappearing from dessert.'Pon my life, I see myself the venerated head of a household, and pillar of the state already. You'll be quite proud of my exceeding respectability.”
He put his head in again, two minutes after, with a nod and a wink.
“I say, think better of it. Try for Miss Dora—the second. Charteris one, me the other, and you the third. What a jolly lot of brothers-in-law. Do think better of it.”
“Hold your tongue, and go to your bed.”
It was not possible to go to mine, till I had arranged my thoughts.
What he stated must be correct. If otherwise, it is next to impossible that, in his position of intimacy, he should not have heard it. Families do not, I suppose, so easily forget one who is lost. There must have been only those three daughters.
I may lay me down in peace. Thou who seest not as man sees, wilt Thou make it peace, even for me?