“Stop a moment, doctor. Of course you’ll attend us, whether we’re ill or whether we ain’t. Keep us in order, like; and as to your fees, why, I ask you now, as a man, what is a fee to me?”
“Mr Poynter!”
“One moment, doctor. I don’t say anything about a brougham. If Miss Richmond—I say, doctor, what made you call her Richmond and him Hendon?”
“A foolish whim—eccentricity,” said the doctor coldly. “One child was born on the North Road, the other at the pretty old place on the south west.”
“I see. Well, as I was saying, if Miss Richmond likes it to be a brougham, either the real thing, or on the job, she has only got to speak, and it’s lies.”
“Am I to understand, Mr Poynter, that this is a formal proposal for my daughter’s hand?”
“That’s it. How you can put it, doctor! You’re right; it is, and there’s my hand.”
“Mr Poynter,” said the doctor, drawing himself up in his chair, and without taking the extended hand, “that is a matter upon which I am not prepared to speak.”
“Why, you’re her father, ain’t you?”
“Does my daughter sanction this?”