“First you ask my opinion as to your presuming to the hand of Miss Bell.
“This question I will at once dismiss by saying that I think you may, for whatever the difference in your respective stations may have been at home, here, circumstances have brought you on more level terms,—and if I may so express it without violating family secrets, for it is no secret, though not a matter to be proclaimed from the house-tops,—Mrs. Bell’s father was master of a small collier, in fact a very small collier or barge, with which he navigated the canals; a very worthy man, for I happen to have known him personally.
“From what you have told me of your father as chief of his clan, so I understood, I fail to see a very great difference between the respective stations of these two men.
“Mind you, Mat, gipsies have not got a very good name in the old country, chiefly from their habits of poaching, I suspect.
“I have no doubt you were a sad poacher,” added the parson, with a sly smile.
Mat shook his head, and laughed.
“However that may have been, there is not much encouragement for the same line of business in this country; but I am wandering.
“Your other question is a solemn one. I have never been asked it before. A dissertation upon marriage embraces many wide and different questions and arguments; and if you asked fifty men, and they answered you truthfully, you would probably get about fifty different statements or ideas.
“However, I will answer you to the best of my ability, drawing my experience from the lives of many good, true, and loyal friends of mine, and—I will give you my own experience, for I am a widower, Mat.”
The parson paused, and seemed to be revolving thoughts of long ago in his mind.