“It is evident, by her letter to you, that she has been most anxious about us. What will she say when she hears we have both been wounded?”
“Ay! it wouldn’t have done to have told her that, or she would have set off for Chatham, as sure as we are sitting here.”
Here a pause ensued for some time, and we were busied with our own thoughts: the silence was at last broken by me.
“Father,” said I, “I should like to ask my father and Peter Anderson to come down to us; they can easily get leave.”
“Is it to be present at your wedding, Tom?”
“Exactly—if Bessy will consent.”
“Well, I have no doubt of that, Tom; but she will now require a little courting, you know why.”
“Why, became all women like it, I suppose.”
“No, Tom; it is because she was in love before you were, d’ye understand?—and now that things are all smooth, and you follow her, why, it’s natural, I suppose, that she should shy off a little in her turn. You must mind that, Tom; it’s a sort of soothing to the mortification of having at one time found herself, as it were, rejected.”
“Well, I shan’t mind that; it will only serve me right for being such a fool as not to have perceived her value before. But how do you understand women so well, father?”