He was so fervid that, to quiet him, the farmer only shook his head doubtfully at the bars of the grate, and let his chest fall slowly. Richard caught what seemed to him a glimpse of encouragement in these signs, and observed: "It's not because you object to me, Mr. Blaize?"
The farmer signified it was not that.
"It's because my father is against me," Richard went on, and undertook to show that love was so sacred a matter that no father could entirely and for ever resist his son's inclinations. Argument being a cool field where the farmer could meet and match him, the young man got on the tramroad of his passion, and went ahead. He drew pictures of Lucy, of her truth, and his own. He took leaps from life to death, from death to life, mixing imprecations and prayers in a torrent. Perhaps he did move the stolid old Englishman a little, he was so vehement, and made so visible a sacrifice of his pride.
Farmer Blaize tried to pacify him, but it was useless. His jewel he must have.
The farmer stretched out his hand for the pipe that allayeth botheration. "May smoke heer now," he said. "Not when—somebody's present. Smoke in the kitchen then. Don't mind smell?"
Richard nodded, and watched the operations while the farmer filled, and lighted, and began to puff, as if his fate hung on them.
"Who'd a' thought, when you sat over there once, of its comin' to this?" ejaculated the farmer, drawing ease and reflection from tobacco. "You didn't think much of her that day, young gentleman! I introduced ye. Well! things comes about. Can't you wait till she returns in due course, now?"
This suggestion, the work of the pipe, did but bring on him another torrent.
"It's queer," said the farmer, putting the mouth of the pipe to his wrinkled-up temples.
Richard waited for him, and then he laid down the pipe altogether, as no aid in perplexity, and said, after leaning his arm on the table and staring at Richard an instant: