“It will outlast my life! I know it will! I feel it will!” said Frank, earnestly, vehemently.
“Tah! tah! tah!—you’ll fall desperately in love with the first pretty squaw of the friendly tribes who shall come to bring moccasins to your frontier fort!”
“Oh, God!” groaned the young man, bitterly, dropping his face into his hands. “There is no way of making a serious impression upon you, and I am going away in two hours!” His tone and manner so affected the really impressible and benevolent old gentleman, that he half embraced him with his fat arm, saying—
“Now don’t, Frank! Do be a good boy! Don’t! Do! It’s all folly now! Indeed it is! Do! Don’t! Now consider—how many pretty girls there are in the world! Don’t, Frank! A great deal prettier than my girl. Never fret about her. Do, Frank. Besides, she’s so young! A mere school-girl. Only fifteen last Monday. Pooh, pooh! Not to be thought of, you know! Far too young!”
“Sir, I can wait. I only wish your sanction to our engagement. I can wait three or four years, if necessary, or any length of time at all, if I may hope to get her at last!”
“She is too young, I tell you, Frank! Too young to know her own mind. Only fifteen. Ridiculous!”
“But, sir, I have heard of gentlemen older and more settled than myself who have actually married girls of fifteen. I only ask an engagement!”
“You mean me, you dog! I know you do! I see you do! But, Frank, seriously and solemnly, I wouldn’t do so again! And for the very reason that I committed that egregious folly, that bitter wrong against a young girl, I will not suffer any one else to do the same wrong to my child, if I can help it!”
“No, Mr. Clifton—pardon me, but are you not about to commit a more grievous wrong to your own lovely, gentle child? Have you not? Pardon me! Pardon me! But have you not promised her hand where she cannot give her heart?”
“No! Heaven forbid! I promised her to Charley Cabell. She used to like him very well. I did the best I could for her happiness. I have secured it—unless—unless—oh, my God, Frank!” suddenly exclaimed the old man, in his turn extremely agitated, and wiping the perspiration from his brow, “I hope—I trust in God you haven’t entrapped her affections! Frank! Frank! She is engaged to Major Cabell! I didn’t tell you so when you first asked me for her, because—because—for many reasons—” (wiping the streaming perspiration from his brow) “it is—it is—disagreeable to remember and to talk about it! But—but—she is engaged to Major Cabell, and—and for many reasons—family reasons—it is necessary that the engagement should be fulfilled! Unless—unless—some inevitable, insurmountable obstacle was to arise and prevent it! Frank! Frank! I am in a great strait! a dire, doleful strait! but—but—sooner than make my girl unhappy, or stand in the way of her perfect happiness, I would—I would—I would die in a jail! Where I may die! Where I may die!” Nothing could exceed the force of the emotion that agitated the old man, shaking his huge form, and choking up his utterance.