"No, I didn't, and breakfast ain't the time, Allan, to be stuffing your head with all that there nonsense!"
Allan smiled. "You had your letters, and as I had my book——"
"You always have your book! I never saw such a fellow for reading—but I'm not saying anything, my boy. No, no, you're a good lad. Few sons please their old fathers as you do me—we're not quarrelling, Allan lad!"
"We never have yet, father, and we never will, I think!"
"I know!" said Sir Josiah. "Ah, Allan, you're doing well, a fine woman, beautiful as a picture, tall and stately, and the daughter of an Earl. Why, boy, you ought to be in the Seventh Heaven of delight and instead you sit there with your nose in a book!"
"She is a fine and a beautiful and I believe a good woman," said Allan, "but her father—" he paused. "I could have wished her a better father!"
"An Earl, an Earl!" cried the old man. "A better father than an Earl! Bless me, Allan—what nonsense! However, you're marrying her not her father; it's all settled, all agreed—" He rubbed his hands, his round red face shone with benevolence and joy. "You're a sensible and dutiful fellow, Allan! You say to yourself, 'My old father wishes it—The girl is good and beautiful and well born, I don't know particularly that I love her—come to that perhaps I don't, but I might go farther and fare worse!' Eh, that's it, isn't it? And you're doing it, boy, because you know it will give pleasure to the old man!"
"I think you have got my reasoning very correctly, father!" Allan said.
"There's no one else?" Sir Josiah said.
"No one else, no—and I like Lady Kathleen. I admire her and I pity her——"