"Well, it is strange. But what have I to do with it?"
"I will explain if you will allow me."
"I really should feel much obliged," urged Tom.
"After refusing contemptuously this eligible alliance, which united every condition of age and fortune and position, what did the fool do? Excuse me if in my anger I speak thus of a nephew I love. One fine morning, without saying a word to anybody, he left his business to a partner, and started off, sir—what for?"
"Well, how can I say?" asked Tom.
"In pursuit of this wretched girl without family or fortune, whose parents had emigrated to the Indian frontier."
"Oh, oh!" said the captain, who began to feel interested, and who listened with a gloomy frown.
"Yes, sir," said the fat man, too wrapped up in his narrative to notice the other's looks, "so that my nephew must be somewhere here about this neighbourhood, looking after his beauty, neglecting his affairs and fortune Tor a girl he will certainly never marry."
"How do you know, sir?"
"At all events I will do everything in my power to prevent it," cried the irate citizen of Boston.