Lord A. You will easily accomplish this business with Fanny.
O’Ded. I’m afraid not. To tell you the truth, my lord, I don’t like the job.
Lord A. Indeed! and why, sir?
O’Ded. Somehow, when I see a poor girl with her pretty little eyes brim full of tears, which I think have no business to be there, I’m more apt to be busy in wiping them away, than in saying cruel things that will make them flow faster; you had better tell her all this yourself, my lord.
Lord A. That, sir, is impossible. If you decline it, I shall find some one less delicate.
O’Ded. There’s reason in that, and if you send another to her, he may not be quite so delicate, as you say: so I’ll even undertake it myself.
Lord A. The poor girl disposed of, if the old fool, her father, will be thus clamorous, we must not be nice as to the means of silencing him—money, I suppose, is his object.
O’Ded. May be not—If a rich man by accident disables a poor man from working, money may make him easy; but when his feelings are deliberately tortured, devil fly away with the mercenary miser, if he will take shining dirt as a compensation for cruelty.
Lord A. I can dispense with moral reflections—It may serve your purpose elsewhere, but to me, who know your practice, your preaching is ridiculous—What is it you propose? If the fellow wont be satisfied by money he must be removed.
O’Ded. Faith, ’tis a new way, sure enough, to make reparation to the feelings of a father, after having seduced daughter under the plea of a false marriage, performed by a sham priest, and a forged licence!