“Win this accursed law-suit for me,” Jabez had said, “and we will talk about matters less important. Meanwhile, you had better make as sure of my niece’s consent as you may of mine. Not that Dorothy would stay for that. I wish you joy of her, that’s all. Women are kittle-cattle to shoe. I don’t think you’ll find my niece an exception to her sex.”
But Nehemiah, despite the guardian’s favour, confessed to himself that if he progressed at all in Dorothy’s good graces, his progress was crab-wise—backwards. What could he talk about? He feigned an interest in the sermons of the Rev. David Jones. But Dorothy yawned at the very mention of the minister’s name. Then he affected an interest in her Sunday School class, but Dorothy said Sunday School classes were generally a combination of scholars who didn’t want to learn and teachers who didn’t know how to teach, and as she felt herself to be one of the latter class, she was determined to give her class up. Then the desperate lover essayed his powers at the retailing of local gossip, telling with unction how young D— was supposed to be casting sheep’s eyes at Nancy N—; how the plain daughter of the vicar’s warden was shamelessly setting her cap at the new curate, and how the hue of Mrs. J—’s nose-end was erroneously attributed to poverty of blood.
In one topic only could he prevail on Dorothy to take an interest at all, and that was a topic on which Nehemiah was eloquent enough at first, but of which in time he became uncommonly shy,—the vexed question of water rights, with especial reference to the great case of “Pinder at the suit of Tinker.”
“So you’ve lost your application for an interim injunction?” Dorothy said demurely one night after tea, when her uncle had hurried off to a deacon’s meeting, promising speedy return, and hospitably pressing his guest to stay for the substantial supper of cold meats and pastry with which our hardier fathers braved the terrors of nightmare and dyspepsia.
“Oh, that’s nothing, Miss Dorothy,” said Nehemiah jauntily, glad of a subject of conversation in which he flattered himself he could shine, “nothing at all, I can assure you.”
“Then you expected to lose?”
“Well, not say expect, but fortune of war you know, fortune of war, glorious uncertainty, and all that, don’tcherknow.”
“But you are certain to win in the end, or is there a glorious uncertainty about that?”
“Oh! yes, sure to win in the long run. Pinder can’t stand the racket. Expected he’d have caved in long since. Can’t understand it. Sykes must be risking more than I’d like to. Sticks like a leech at all points.”
“There’s an old saying, Mr. Wimpenny, that Tear’em’s a good dog, but Holdfast’s a better. Perhaps Mr. Sykes is one of your Holdfast breed.”