“I say, Nelly!” he exclaimed, looking annoyed, and completely off his balance, “what the dickens have you been about?”
“About, papa?” said the girl, raising her eyebrows, “I don’t understand you!”
“Then the sooner you do the better! I’ve quite enough to worry me without your foolery! Here’s the Rajah come to see me on business.”
“Very well, papa, I don’t understand business,” she said, quietly.
“But you’ll have to understand it!” he cried, angrily. “Here, he says that you have been giving him permission to speak to me; and as far as I can understand him, he proposes for your hand!”
“The Rajah, papa! Oh! absurd!”
“Oh, yes, it’s absurd enough, confound his copper-coloured insolence! But it puts me in a fix with him. If I offend him, I shall offend his people, or he’ll make them offended, and I shall be a heavy loser. Did you tell him to speak to me?”
“Certainly not, papa!”
“Perhaps I misunderstood him, for he speaks horrible English. But whether or no, he proposes that you shall be his wife.”
“His wife, papa! Why, he has a dozen!”