‘My own is tried pretty hard, and I can feel for you,’ said Kearney, with a grim humour.
‘I’ve come to ask if you’ll give me your daughter?’ said Lockwood, and his face became blood-red with the effort the words had cost him.
‘Give you my daughter?’ cried Kearney.
‘I want to make her my wife, and as I know little about courtship, and have nobody here that could settle this affair for me—for Walpole is thinking of his own concerns—I’ve thought the best way, as it was the shortest, was to come at once to yourself: I have got a few documents here that will show you I have enough to live on, and to make a tidy settlement, and do all that ought to be done.’
‘I’m sure you are an excellent fellow, and I like you myself; but you see, major, a man doesn’t dispose of his daughter like his horse, and I’d like to hear what she would say to the bargain.’
‘I suppose you could ask her?’
‘Well, indeed, that’s true, I could ask her; but on the whole, major, don’t you think the question would come better from yourself?’
‘That means courtship?’
‘Yes, I admit it is liable to that objection, but somehow it’s the usual course.’
‘No, no,’ said the other slowly, ‘I could not manage that. I’m sick of bachelor life, and I’m ready to send in my papers and have done with it, but I don’t know how to go about the other. Not to say, Kearney,’ added he, more boldly, ‘that I think there is something confoundedly mean in that daily pursuit of a woman, till by dint of importunity, and one thing or another, you get her to like you! What can she know of her own mind after three or four months of what these snobs call attentions? How is she to say how much is mere habit, how much is gratified vanity of having a fellow dangling after her, how much the necessity of showing the world she is not compromised by the cad’s solicitations? Take my word for it, Kearney, my way is the best. Be able to go up like a man and tell the girl, “It’s all arranged. I’ve shown the old cove that I can take care of you, he has seen that I’ve no debts or mortgages; I’m ready to behave handsomely, what do you say yourself?”’