"Well done, governor—bravo! you can carry it off as cleverly as if you were an actor; do you mean to say now you didn't leave a letter behind you here upon your table, bidding Maria marry in your absence to spare your paternal feelings (kind old boy, it is, too!) and enclosing them one hundred pounds for the honey-moon?"
The mystified father made some inarticulate expression of ignorant amazement, and our stock-jobber went on:
"So of course they're married and off—Mr. and Mrs. Cle——"
A whirlwind of disastrous imprecations cut all short; and then in a voice choked with passion he gasped out—
"But—but are they married—are they married? how do you know it? can't we catch 'em first, ey? what!"
"How do I know it? that's a good un now, father, when I had it under your hand to give the girl away myself instead of you. Do you mean to say you didn't write that letter?"
"Boy, I tell you, I've written nothing—I know nothing; you speak in riddles."
"Well then, governor, if I do, I'll to guess 'em: I begin to see how it was all brought about—but they did it cleverly too, and were quite too many for me. Only listen: that fellow Clements, ay, and Miss Maria too (artful minx, I know her), must have forged a letter as if from you to get poor fools, me and my mother, to see 'em spliced, while you were tooling to Yorkshire."
"Impossible—ey? what? I'll—I'll—I'll—"
"Now, governor, don't stand there doing nothing but denying all I say; only you go yourself, and ask my mother if she didn't see the letter—if they didn't marry upon it, and if that precious sister of mine doesn't richly deserve every thing she'll some day get from her affectionate, her excellent, her ill-used father?"