CHAPTER XXXI.
DICK THINKS OF THE CITY.
When Dick had uttered this audacious speech, Mr. Mayne started back, and his expression of mingled wrath and dismay was so ludicrous that under any other circumstances his son would have found it difficult to keep his countenance. 227
“What! what!” he almost shouted, losing all sense of politeness, and even of Nan’s presence; “you young fool, what do you mean by trumping up this nonsense and presuming to talk to me in this way?”
Dick thought it prudent to drop Nan’s hand,—and, indeed, the girl shrank away from them both in alarm at this outburst: nevertheless, his countenance and bearing maintained the same admirable sang-froid, as he confronted his angry parent:
“Now, father, what is the use of calling me names? When a fellow is of age, and knows his own mind, he does not care a pin for being called a fool. ‘Hard words break no bones,’ as our copy-leaves used to tell us,—no, I have not got that quite right; but that is about my meaning. Look here, father,” he continued, in a coaxing, boyish voice; “I have cared for Nan ever since she was a little creature so high,” again reverting to the infantile measurement. “I have always meant to marry her,—that is, if she would have me,” correcting himself, as Nan drew herself up a little proudly. “Money or no money, there is not another girl in England that I would have for a wife. I would wait for her if I had to wait half my life, just the same as she would wait for me; and so, as I said before, when a fellow has made up his mind, there is nothing more to say.” And here Dick pursed up his lips for a whistle, but thought better of it, and fell to twisting and untwisting the ends of his sandy moustache.
Nan’s downcast eyes revealed nothing. But if Dick could only have seen the happy look in them! What eloquence could ever have been so dear to her as that clear rough-and-ready statement of her lover’s feelings for her? “There is not another girl in England that I would have for a wife.” Could anything surpass the beauty of that sentence? Oh, how manly, how true he was, this Dick of hers!
“Oh, indeed! I am to say nothing, am I?” returned Mr. Mayne, with exquisite irony. “My son is to dictate to me; and I am to be silent! Oh, you young fool!” he muttered under his breath; but then for the moment words seemed to fail him.
In spite of the wrath that was boiling within him, and to which he did not dare give vent in Nan’s presence, in spite of the grief and disappointment that his son’s defiance had caused him, Dick’s bearing filled him with admiration and amazement.