"Perhaps you'd alter your opinion if I came upon you before Christmas for your sanction."
"No, by Jove; that I shouldn't. I should be delighted. You don't mean to say you've got anybody in your eye. There's only one thing I ask, Ralph;—open out-and-out confidence."
"You shall have it, sir."
"There is somebody, then."
"Well; no; there isn't anybody. It would be impudence in me to say there was."
"Then I know there is." Upon this encouragement Ralph told his father that on his two last visits to London he had seen a girl whom he thought that he would like to ask to be his wife. He had been at Fulham on three or four occasions,—it was so he put it, but his visits had, in truth, been only three,—and he thought that this niece of Sir Thomas Underwood possessed every charm that a woman need possess,—"except money," said Ralph. "She has no fortune, if you care about that."
"I don't care about money," said the Squire. "It is for the man to have that;—at any rate for one so circumstanced as you." The end of all this was that Ralph was authorised to please himself. If he really felt that he liked Miss Bonner well enough, he might ask her to be his wife to-morrow.
"The difficulty is to get at her," said Ralph.
"Ask the uncle for his permission. That's the manliest and the fittest way to do it. Tell him everything. Take my word for it he won't turn his face against you. As for me, nothing on earth would make me so happy as to see your children. If there were a dozen, I would not think them one too many. But mark you this, Ralph; it will be easier for us,—for you and me, if I live,—and for you without me if I go, to make all things clear and square and free while the bairns are little, than when they have to go to school and college, or perhaps want to get married."
"Ain't we counting our chickens before they are hatched?" said Ralph laughing.