Kate was taken quite aback by this summary method of coming to the point. Repulsing him energetically, she exclaimed, while she blushed crimson, “O Harry—Mr Somerville!” and burst into tears.
Poor Harry stood before her for a moment, his head hanging down, and a deep blush of shame on his face.
“O Kate,” said he, in a deep, tremulous voice, “forgive me; do—do forgive me! I knew not what I said. I scarce knew what I did” (here he seized her hand). “I know but one thing, Kate, and tell it you I will, if it should cost me my life. I love you, Kate, to distraction, and I wish you to be my wife. I have been rude, very rude. Can you forgive me, Kate?”
Now, this latter part of Harry’s speech was particularly comical, the comicality of it lying, in this, that while he spoke he drew Kate gradually towards him, and at the very time when he gave utterance to the penitential remorse for his rudeness, Kate was infolded in a much more vigorous embrace than at the first; and, what is more remarkable still, she laid her little head quietly on his shoulder, as if she had quite changed her mind in regard to what was and what was not rude, and rather enjoyed it than otherwise.
While the lovers stood in this interesting position, it became apparent to Harry’s olfactory nerves that the atmosphere was impregnated with tobacco smoke. Looking hastily up, he beheld an apparition that tended somewhat to increase the confusion of his faculties.
In the opening of the bower stood Mr Kennedy, senior, in a state of inexpressible amazement. We say inexpressible advisedly, because the extreme pitch of feeling which Mr Kennedy experienced at what he beheld before him cannot possibly be expressed by human visage. As far as the countenance of man could do it, however, we believe the old gentleman’s came pretty near the mark on this occasion. His hands were in his coat pockets, his body bent a little forward, his head and neck outstretched a little beyond it, his eyes almost starting from the sockets, and certainly the most prominent feature in his face; his teeth firmly clinched on his beloved pipe, and his lips expelling a multitude of little clouds so vigorously that one might have taken him for a sort of self-acting intelligent steam-gun that had resolved utterly to annihilate Kate and Harry at short range in the course of two minutes.
When Kate saw her father she uttered a slight scream, covered her face with her hands, rushed from the bower, and disappeared in the wood.
“So, young gentleman,” began Mr Kennedy, in a slow, deliberate tone of voice, while he removed the pipe from his mouth, clinched his fist, and confronted Harry, “you’ve been invited to my house as a guest, sir, and you seize the opportunity basely to insult my daughter!”
“Stay, stay, my dear sir,” interrupted Harry, laying his hand on the old man’s shoulder and gazing earnestly into his face. “Oh, do not, even for a moment, imagine that I could be so base as to trifle with the affections of your daughter. I may have been presumptuous, hasty, foolish, mad if you will, but not base. God forbid that I should treat her with disrespect, even in thought! I love her, Mr Kennedy, as I never loved before. I have asked her to be my wife, and—she—”
“Whew!” whistled old Mr Kennedy, replacing his pipe between his teeth, gazing abstractedly at the ground, and emitting clouds innumerable. After standing thus a few seconds, he turned his back slowly upon Harry, and smiled outrageously once or twice, winking at the same time, after his own fashion, at the river. Turning abruptly round, he regarded Harry with a look of affected dignity, and said, “Pray, sir, what did my daughter say to your very peculiar proposal?”