“Out with it, my lad, you can’t ask me anything I wouldn’t be happy to answer, most assuredly you can’t.”
“It’s about Adelaide,” said Bombs, in an assured tone. “I know you and father have talked of uniting your families. Of course she is young yet and I am not very aged; but I am old enough to entertain the idea; and what I want to ask of you is permission to talk to her about it. My father has written me that I am to go abroad for an extended trip—that is, after I have got through here and witnessed the reburning of Chicago. When I return I shall be quite a mature man and she will be a charming young lady, no doubt. You see what would be likely to happen; but I do not feel like going away without sounding the depths—getting a sort of a free-holder’s lease—lest another fellow should come along and secure the prize. I think it well to look out for such matters ahead of time.”
“All right, Fons. I would like nothing better than to unite our families—consolidate them, so to speak. I believe in consolidations of that kind, I assure you I do, with my whole heart; but you’ll have to do your own proposing. I’m a true Yankee on that head. I should never get Anglicised on that point if I should sail over to England every month. I assure you I shouldn’t. You will have to do the straight thing. You needn’t try to win her in a round-about way through me or her mamma. She’s always had her head pretty much, and perhaps that’s what makes her rather heady. She is honest, though, and has very strong notions of the right and the wrong of things. She often takes me to task for not squaring my business concerns by the ‘Golden Rule.’ Probably she would do the same with her husband. Eh! Fons?”
“I understand,” replied Fons. “She’s at the formative period now. She will have left off a great many of her notions in two or four years’ time. Besides, I am not afraid of them even as they are.”
“Proceed then, young man. Push ahead with the sounding. You have my hearty permission, most assuredly you have. You seem like an only son already; and you have my best wishes for your success with the plummet-line, so to speak. No use of wasting any great amount of lead on it, though, most assuredly not. You will be able to ascertain the exact degree of perpendicularity in Addie’s case without an enormous waste of time or money. She is straight up and down as a rule, most decidedly so. There’s nothing crooked about her or slantendicular, as there often is about the opposite sex—rest assured there is not. Unlike the vast majority of fathers I have kept up an intimate acquaintance with my daughter ever since she was born, and I can give you my hand or oath on that point, most assuredly I can. I’ve nothing more to say except that I shall keep an eye on the other fellows while you are away, and that she’s heart free to date. She’s only a grown up child, so to speak—all ready to bloom but not fully bloomed out, rest assured she is not.”
With such characteristic assurance, Mr. Bombs left his prospective father-in-law to seek Adelaide. He was anxious to make his first experiment with the plummet-line as Mr. Schwarmer had not altogether inaptly called it. It pleased him to fancy that he had already scored a success in the matrimonial line, but whether it was Mr. Schwarmer’s hearty permission to talk freely to his daughter, or the plummet-line illustration that tickled his fancy the most, he could hardly have told. He may have been pleased to think that his own expression as to “sounding the depths,” had been its inspiration, for he was at the age when he was beginning to use idiomatic language and large-sized words and would be apt to note their effectiveness. As to Schwarmer, he may have had a youthful experience with plummet-lines even though it may have gone no farther than the sounding of a goose-pond.
When he found her she was coming up the hill from Mrs. Langley’s. She appeared on its summit at the moment when the sun was plunging down behind it like a ball of fire. It was rather a remarkable coincidence and it struck him as such, that when she got to the place where Mrs. Langley had first appeared on the night of her accident, she stopped, threw her head upward and clasped her hands around her body just as the poor scared woman had done. He understood the pantomime perfectly and it pleased him, although it recalled one of his most signal failures—that is from a professional point of view. From the artistic point it had been considered quite a success—“quite madonna like,” Miss Drawling had said, and although he would not have given a “fip” for her opinion on any other subject, he thought she had said one very good thing. His regret for the accident had never been heart deep. He inclined to the brute belief that accidents as a rule added to the human interest in life—at least the kind of accidents that call forth the tenderest kind of sympathy.
“You, have been posing,” he said as he went forward to meet her. “Really you did it well. You see I was watching for you—to tell you something.”
“I have been down to see poor Mary. She hasn’t got well of her fright yet. What a dreadful thing it was!”
“Yes, but you blamed me for it at the time, roundly. I hope you are not going to blame me over again,” said Bombs lightly.