“His Maker would maybe know that best,” retorted Marion undismayed; “and me, I’m willing to take him as he is. But I will not be a consenting party,” the girl cried raising her voice, “to sending any person away to his ruin. You think one way is just good for everybody all the same, as if we were not made dark and fair, and big and little, to show the difference! And I will not say I will wait for him, papa,” Marion added more calmly, after a pause for breath. “For I might miss a very good match in the time, and never get such a chance again; and he might never come back, as I think most likely, and I would have nobody at all. So I will not promise, for it would be bad for us both,—both him and me.”
“You little calculating cutty,” cried her father; “is this what you call being in love with a man?”
“I never said a word on that subject,” said Marion. “I said I was willing to take him as he is. And I suppose,” she said, coming down suddenly from her oratorical platform to the calm tone of ordinary affairs, “I suppose you will be meaning to give me some kind of a fortune, more or less, when I’m married and go away.”
“I suppose so—to get rid of you,” said her father with a laugh.
“That was just what I meant,” said Marion seriously; “then what would ail you, papa, to settle about Gilston, and just let him take up the way of nature there? He could do what was wanted there.”
Rowland sprang from his seat in wrath and high indignation. “Preserve the game and shoot it in the season, and play your idiotic games all the summer——”
(“No, papa,” said Marion demurely, “we would be May and June in town.”)
“And hunt in the winter, and play the fool all the year round—on my money, that I’ve worked hard for, every penny! I will see him—and you—far enough first!”
“Papa,” said Marion, “I have been talking to Rosamond upon that subject, and she thinks that men like you are under a great delusion. For she says you are not an old man now, but just in your prime, and you’re neither worn out nor a bit the worse. And she says she knows men that have worked far far harder and actually have worn themselves out, and never made any money at all. So that it’s not hard work, as you suppose, but just that you’re awfully clever, and have had tremendous luck. Oh, you can ask Rosamond what she means. It is not me; but that’s my opinion too.”
To imagine a man more bewildered than Rowland, thus assailed in his very stronghold by two “brats of girls,” as he himself said, who could know nothing about the matter: yet subtly flattered all the same by the statement that he was still in his prime and awfully clever, things which no man, especially when he is sur le retour, objects to hear—would have been impossible. He glared upon his little daughter, standing dauntless, purling forth her iconoclastic remarks, and then he gave a short laugh, or snort of angry contempt, and smote her lightly (yet enough to make her shake from head to foot) on the shoulder, and bade her stick to her own plea and her lad’s, and let other people speak for themselves.