March. Mother Gale, your ejaculations are perfectly distressing. I don’t open my mouth to indulge in a few fond hopes, but you ram your everlasting “fiddlesticks” down my throat to choke all my soaring fancies.
Mrs. G. Well, I should think your throat would be sore, with all those big words.
March. Yes, Miss Kate: I have strong hopes of being rewarded for my blighted youth with one or more parents of some standing in the world.
Kate. I trust your hopes will be realized. This is a strange story, and will interest my father, startle him; for years ago he lost a child by shipwreck.
March. A child,—a boy?
Kate. Yes, a boy, the child of his first wife, who left France with her infant in a ship that never reached her port.
March. Good gracious! when was this?
Kate. Oh! a long, long time ago, before I was born, for I am the daughter of his second wife: it must have been twenty,—yes, more than twenty years ago.
March. A boy, shipwrecked twenty years ago. Good gracious, it almost takes away my breath.