"Because I didn't choose, father. It wasn't his fault. He spoke fair enough,—though I don't suppose he ever wanted it. Why should he?"
"You might have had him then. He'd 've never dared to go back. I'd a killed him if he had."
"What good would it have done, father? He'd never have loved me, and he'd have despised you and mother."
"I wouldn't 've minded that," said Mr. Neefit, wiping his eyes.
"But I should have minded. What should I have felt with a husband as wouldn't have wanted me ever to have my own father in his house? Would that have made me happy?"
"It 'd 've made me happy to know as you was there."
"No, father; there would have been no happiness in it. When I came to see what he was I knew I should never love him. He was just willing to take me because of his word;—and was I going to a man like that? No, father;—certainly not." The poor man was at that moment too far gone in his misery to argue the matter further, and he lay on the old sofa, very much at Polly's mercy. "Drop it, father," she said. "It wasn't to be, and it couldn't have been. You'd better say you'll drop it." But, sick and uncomfortable as he was on that evening, he couldn't be got to say that he would drop it.
Nor could he be got to drop it for some ten days after that;—but on a certain evening he had come home very uncomfortable from the effects of gin-and-water, and had been spoken to very sensibly both by his wife and daughter.
By seven on the following morning Ontario Moggs was sitting in the front parlour of the house at Hendon, and Polly Neefit was sitting with him. He had never been there at so early an hour before, and it was thought afterwards by both Mr. and Mrs. Neefit that his appearance, so unexpected by them, had not surprised their daughter Polly. Could it have been possible that she had sent a message to him after that little scene with her father? There he was, at any rate, and Polly was up to receive him. "Now, Onty, that'll do. I didn't want to talk nonsense, but just to settle something."
"But you'll tell a fellow that you're glad to see him?"