The father for a moment or two was struck dumb by the magnitude of his son's proposition. "That's what I call playing the game firm," continued the son. "Do you lay down your terms before him, substantial, and then stick to 'em. 'Them's my terms, Sir Thomas,' you'll say. 'If you don't like 'em, as I can't halter, why in course I'll go elsewhere.' Do you be firm to that, and you'll see how the game'll go."
"And you think he'll give you his daughter in marriage?"
"Why not? I'm honest born, hain't I? And she's a bastard."
"But, Aby, you don't know what sort of people these are. You don't know what her breeding has been."
"D—— her breeding. I know this: she'd get a deuced pretty fellow for her husband, and one that girls as good as her has hankered hafter long enough. It won't do, governor, to let people as is in their position pick and choose like. We've the hupper hand, and we must do the picking and choosing."
"She'd never have you, Aby; not if her father went down on his knees to her to ask her."
"Oh, wouldn't she? By heaven, then, she shall, and that without any kneeling at all. She shall have me, and be deuced glad to take me. What! she'd refuse a fellow like me when she knows that she and all belonging to her'd be turned into the streets if she don't have me! I'm clear of another way of thinking, then. My opinion is she'd come to me jumping. I'll tell you what, governor, you don't know the sex."
Mr. Mollett senior upon this merely shook his head. Perhaps the fact was that he knew the sex somewhat better than his son. It had been his fate during a portion of his life to live among people who were, or ought to have been, gentlemen. He might have been such himself had he not gone wrong in life from the very starting-post. But his son had had no such opportunities. He did know and could know nothing about ladies and gentlemen.
"You're mistaken, Aby," said the old man. "They'd never suffer you to come among them on such a footing as that. They'd sooner go forth to the world as beggars."
"Then, by G——! they shall go forth as beggars. I've said it now, father, and I'll stick to it. You know the stuff I'm made of." As he finished speaking, he swallowed down the last half of a third glass of hot spirits and water, and then glared on his father with angry, blood-shot eyes, and a red, almost lurid face. The unfortunate father was beginning to know the son, and to feel that his son would become his master.