"Kindly repeat that statement, Addie, will you?"
She looks into her brother's startled face, and complies with mechanical firmness, as if she were saying a lesson.
"Mr. Armstrong of Kelvick asked me this afternoon to marry him. I fell from a tree and hurt my foot in the grove, and he found me there, and drove me on to the house, where he asked me to marry him. He said that, if I would, he'd settle Nutsgrove on me altogether, that I might have the girls to live with me always, and that he'd help on you boys as well as he could in the world."
"And what did you say?" comes in trembling eager chorus.
"I said nothing particular—neither 'Yes' nor 'No.' I said I wanted time to consider and consult with you all."
"Thank Heaven, thank Heaven!" Miss Darcy's quivering voice breaks the silence as she half staggers with arms outstretched toward her niece. "And I had begun to doubt—to question Providence! I am rebuked now—I am rebuked now. Addie, my dearest, you have made me a happy old woman to-night!"
"I knew you would be pleased—would wish me to—to accept him," says Addie softly, a little impressed by her heartfelt emotion; "it was the others I felt doubtful about—whose opinion I wanted."
She looks round at the flushed faces of her brothers and sisters; but, of the four, three, though evidently eager to give their opinions, are afraid to open their mouths until "Robert the Magnificent," the recognized head of the family, arbiter of its ethics and manners, has first given tongue.
He walks round slowly from the fireplace, lays his hand heavily upon his sister's shoulder, and then says, in a tone crisp, terse, Napoleonic—
"Marry him! Shut your eyes, my girl, and swallow him as if he were a pill."