“Run against father?” ejaculated Phil.
“Ay. We’ll teach him to what trimming and time-serving come. And be damned to him!”
“That ’ere ’s all very well for you,” responded Hennion, “but he hain’t got the whip hand of you like he has of me. He would n’t stand my—”
“He ’d have to,” gleefully interrupted the squire. “Join hands with me, lad, and I’ll fix it so ye can snap your fingers at him.”
“But—” began Phil.
“But,” broke in the squire. “Nonsense! No but, lad. Butter—ay, and cream it shall be. Let him turn ye off. There’s a home at Greenwood for ye, if he does—and something better than that too. Sixteen, ye dog! Sweet sixteen, rosy sixteen, bashful sixteen, glowing sixteen, run-away-and-want-to-be-found sixteen!”
“She don’t seem ter want me ter find her,” sighed Phil.
“Fooh!” jeered the father. “There’s only two kinds of maids, as ye’d know if ye’d been out in the world as I have —those that want a husband and those that don’t. But six months married, and ye can’t pick the one from t’ other, try your best. There’s nothing brings a lass to the round-about so quick as having to do what she does n’t want. They are born contrary and skittish, and they can’t help shying at fences and gates, but give ’em the spur and the whip, and over they go, as happy as a lark. And I say so, Janice will marry ye, and mark my word, come a month she’ll be complaining that ye don’t fondle her enough.”
Mr. Meredith’s pictorial powers, far more than his philosophy, were too much for Philemon to resist. He held out his hand, saying, “’T is a bargain, squire, an' I’ll set to on a canvass to-day.”
“Well said,” responded the elder, heartily. “And that ’s not all, Phil, that ye shall get from it. I’ve a tidy lot of money loaned to merchants in New York, and I’ll get it from ’em, and we’ll buy the mortgages on your father’s lands. Who’ll have the whip hand then, eh? Oh! we’ll smoke the old fox before we’ve done with him. His brush shall be well singed.”