“Something foolish, I suppose,” Fanny replied, carelessly. “But this is what you ought to say,” she went on, with elaborate politeness, and assuming a romantic attitude. “Sir, I love your beautiful daughter, Miss Fanny, and I ask your permission to make her my wife.”
Guy groaned, bending forward till his fingers nearly touched the floor.
“But it takes an awfully fascinating man to talk like that. Now let’s go on.” Fanny burlesqued her father’s manner again. “So you want to marry Fanny, do you? Well, since she’s been out of school, you’re about the tenth man who has asked——”
“What? Do you mean to say that all last Summer, while I was slaving down in Washington——?”
“This time my father would tell you to leave the house,” said Fanny, haughtily, with a wave of her hand.
“Now, look here, I don’t like this game,” Guy declared.
“But I like it. Therefore it goes. Now don’t be a silly boy. You might as well get used to dad’s ways first as last. Ahem! As I said, you are the—er—the eleventh. Now, what claim have you on my daughter?”
Guy seized the chance. “She’s head and ears in love with me,” he cried, before she had time to stop him. “She can’t live without me.”
Fanny seized a book and held it in the air. “Do you know what dad would do if you said that? He’d pack me home to Ashburnham, and I’d have to stay there all Winter.”
“I had to tell the truth, didn’t I?” Guy asked, meekly.