"You feel, of course, a considerable exhilaration of spirits in consequence of this change?"
"I'm simply bursting with them."
"Naturally, naturally. And you propose, no doubt, to exercise your activities in some beneficial way?"
"In a dozen ways. I've already been the means of securing two happy engagements for my youngest children."
"And breaking off two," said Andrew.
His father turned to him with a frown. This was hardly the support he expected. To his great pleasure, the sympathetic Mr. Brown also disapproved of the interruption.
"One thing at a time, please," said he, and resumed his intelligent inquiries. "These young persons to whom your children have become engaged—they are hardly the matches you would have made at one time, are they?"
"I'm afraid I was a bit of an ass at one time," Mr. Walkingshaw confessed.
"I see, I see. And now, as to the engagements you have broken off—you felt yourself inspired, prompted from within, as it were, to bring them to an end, I take it?"
"You've put it deuced well," said Heriot.