“What do you wish me to say?” replied Sarah, looking down upon her work, as she turned round to me.
“That you will not reject the orphan who was fostered by your father, and who reminds you of what he was, that you may not forget at this moment what I trust is the greatest bar to his presumption—his humble origin.”
“Jacob, that was said like yourself—it was nobly said; and if you were not born noble, you have true nobility of mind. I will imitate your example. Have I not often, during our long friendship, told you that I loved you?”
“Yes, as a child you did, Sarah.”
“Then, as a woman, I repeat it. And now are you satisfied?”
I took Sarah by the hand; she did not withdraw it, but allowed me to kiss it over and over again.
“But your father and mother, Sarah?”
“Would never have allowed our intimacy if they had not approved of it, Jacob, depend upon it. However, you may make yourself easy on that score by letting them know what has passed; and then, I presume, you will be out of your misery.”
Before the day was over I had spoken to Mrs Drummond, and requested her to open the business to her husband, as I really felt it more than I could dare to do. She smiled as her daughter hung upon her neck; and when I met Mr Drummond at dinner-time I was “out of my misery,” for he shook me by the hand, and said, “You have made us all very happy, Jacob; for that girl appears determined either to marry you or not to marry at all. Come; dinner is ready.”
I will leave the reader to imagine how happy I was, what passed between Sarah and me in our tête-à-tête of that evening, how unwilling I was to quit the house, and how I ordered a post-chaise to carry me home, because I was afraid to trust myself on that water on which the major part of my life had been safely passed, lest any accident should happen to me and rob me of my anticipated bliss. From that day I was as one of the family, and finding the distance too great, took up my abode at apartments contiguous to the house of Mr Drummond. But the course of other people’s love did not run so smooth, and I must now return to Mary Stapleton and Tom Beazeley.