"Oh, father, father, it never can be!" she exclaimed in broken sobs, and clinging to his neck closer than ever.
"Nonsense, Winny! what's the matther, I say? why can't it be? Of course you did not refuse Tom's offer?"
"I'd, father—indeed I did. I never can care for Tom Murdock; father, I could never be happy with that man. Don't ask me to marry him."
"Is the girl mad? To be sure I will, Winny. There's but the two of you in it an' with Mick's farm an' mine joined,—the leases are all as one as 'free simple,'—you'd be as grand as many ladies an' gentlemen in the county;" and he disengaged himself from her arms, and strode toward the door.
Winny thought he was going; but he had no notion of it at so unsettled a point. She rushed between him and the door.
"Father, don't go!" she cried; "for God's sake don't leave me that way!"
"Winny, it's what I'm greatly surprised at you, so I am. My whole life has been spent in puttin' together a dacent little fortun' for you; I never had one on airth I loved but yourself an' your poor mother—God rest her sowl! I never spoke a cross word to you, Winny jewel, since I followed her to the grave, four days after you were born; an' now, in my old days, when I haven't long to last, you're goin' to break my heart, an' shorten them same. Oh, Winny, Winny, say it's only jokin' you are, an' I'll forgive you, cruel as it was."
"No, father, I'm telling you the real truth; people seldom joke with the tears running down their cheeks; look at them, father. I know all you say is true; and indeed it will break my own heart to oppose you, if you do not yield. But listen here, father dear; sure after all your love and kindness to me for the last eighteen or twenty years, I may say, you won't go now and spoil it all by crossing my happiness without any necessity for it. Tom put all the grandeur and wealth before me himself, that the joining of the two farms and marrying him would bring to me. But it is no use, father; I never liked that man, and I never can. Oh, don't ask me, father asthore; I'm contented and happy as I am."
"Winny, I never found you out in a lie since you could first spake, an' I'm sure you won't tell me one now. Listen to me, Winny. Tom Murdock is a fine, handsome young fellow, an' well to do in the world, with a grand education, an' fit to hould his own anywhere; and I say he's any young girl's fancy, or ought to be, at any rate. You an' he have been reared at the doore with each other. What you are yourself, Winny asthore, I need not say, for every one that sees you knows it; and well they may, for sure you spake for yourself. It seldom happens—indeed, Winny, I never knew it—that a boy an' girl like you an' Tom, reared at the doore that way, fail but what they take a likin' to each other. It seems Tom done his part, both as to the likin' an' spakin', as he ought to do in both; but you, Winny, have done neither. Now, Winny, I can't but think that's very strange, an' I have but the one way to riddle it. Tell me now, honestly and plainly, is there any one that cum afore Tom in his request? Answer me that, Winny?"
"I win, father, honestly and truly. It is not that any one has come between me and Tom that made me refuse him. The very thing that you say, of our being reared at the door with one another, has made me dislike him. I have seen too much of his ways, and heard too many of his words, ever to like him, father; there is no use in trying to make me, for I never can."