His jolly red face shining with smiles and health
“How did the intelligence reach you?” asked Mr. Pickwick.
“Oh, it came to my girls, of course,” replied Wardle. “Arabella wrote, the day before yesterday, to say she had made a stolen match without her husband’s father’s consent, and so you had gone down to get it when his refusing it couldn’t prevent the match, and all the rest of it. I thought it a very good time to say something serious to my girls; so I said what a dreadful thing it was that children should marry without their parents’ consent, and so forth; but, bless your hearts, I couldn’t make the least impression upon them. They thought it such a much more dreadful thing that there should have been a wedding without bridesmaids, that I might as well have preached to Joe himself.”
Here the old gentleman stopped to laugh; and having done so, to his heart’s content, presently resumed.
“But this is not the best of it, it seems. This is only half the love-making and plotting that have been going forward. We have been walking on mines for the last six months, and they’re sprung at last.”
“What do you mean?” exclaimed Mr. Pickwick, turning pale; “no other secret marriage, I hope?”
“No, no,” replied old Wardle; “not so bad as that; no.”
“What then?” inquired Mr. Pickwick; “am I interested in it?”