"No, I won't. I won't tell a fellow anything he doesn't know already. You and I have got to get married."
"Of course we have."
"But we want father's consent. I'm not going to have him made unhappy, if I can help it. He's that wretched sometimes at present that my heart is half killed about him."
"The things he says are monstrous," asserted Moggs, thinking of the protestation lately made by the breeches-maker in his own hearing, to the effect that Ralph Newton should yet be made to marry his daughter.
"All the same I've got to think about him. There's a dozen or so of men as would marry me, Mr. Moggs; but I can never have another father."
"I'll be the first of the dozen any way," said the gallant Ontario.
"That depends. However, mother says so, and if father 'll consent, I won't go against it. I'll go to him now, before he's up, and I'll tell him you're here. I'll bring him to his senses if I can. I don't know whatever made him think so much about gentlemen."
"He didn't learn it from you, Polly."
"Perhaps he did, after all; and if so, that's the more reason why I'd forgive him." So saying, Polly went up-stairs upon her mission. On the landing she met her mother, and made known the fact that Ontario was in the parlour. "Don't you go to him, mother;—not yet," said Polly. Whereby it may be presumed that Mrs. Neefit had been informed of Mr. Moggs's visit before Polly had gone to him.
Mr. Neefit was in bed, and his condition apparently was not a happy one. He was lying with his head between his hands, and was groaning, not loudly, but very bitterly. His mode of life for the last month had not been of a kind to make him comfortable, and his conscience, too, was ill at ease. He had been a hard-working man, who had loved respectability and been careful of his wife and child. He had been proud to think that nobody could say anything against him, and that he had always paid his way. Up to the time of this disastrous fit of ambition on Polly's behalf he had never made himself ridiculous, and had been a prosperous tradesman, well thought of by his customers. Suddenly he had become mad, but not so mad as to be unconscious of his own madness. The failure of his hopes, joined to the inexpressibly bitter feeling that in their joint transactions young Newton had received all that had been necessary to him, whereas he, Neefit, had got none of that for which he had bargained,—these together had so upset him that he had lost his balance, had travelled out of his usual grooves, and had made an ass of himself. He knew he had made an ass of himself,—and was hopelessly endeavouring to show himself to be less of an ass than people thought him, by some success in his violence. If he could only punish young Newton terribly, people would understand why he had done all this. But drink had been necessary to give him courage for his violence, and now as he lay miserable in bed, his courage was very low.