I might like to go very much indeed; but as I have been knocked about at sea a good deal, and perhaps more than I intend to be again, it is no novelty to me, and there might be other things which I liked still better: for instance, spending the afternoon with you.
Then am I not to go?
I think not. Don’t pull such a long face: but be a man, and make up your mind to it, as the geese do to going barefoot.
But why may I not go?
Because I am not Madam How, but your Daddy.
What can that have to do with it?
If you asked Madam How, do you know what she would answer in a moment, as civilly and kindly as could be? She would say—Oh yes, go by all means, and please yourself, my pretty little man. My world is the Paradise which the Irishman talked of, in which “a man might do what was right in the sight of his own eyes, and what was wrong too, as he liked it.”
Then Madam How would let me go in the yacht?
Of course she would, or jump overboard when you were in it; or put your finger in the fire, and your head afterwards; or eat Irish spurge, and die like the salmon; or anything else you liked. Nobody is so indulgent as Madam How: and she would be the dearest old lady in the world, but for one ugly trick that she has. She never tells any one what is coming, but leaves them to find it out for themselves. She lets them put their fingers in the fire, and never tells them that they will get burnt.
But that is very cruel and treacherous of her.