"Father, let us take what we have got, and go to Venice! all together. We'll travel ever so cheaply and live ever so plainly; only let us go! Only let us go!"
"Think your mother'd like travelling second-class?" said Mr. Copley in the same way.
"She wouldn't mind so very much; and I wouldn't mind it at all. If we could only go."
"And what is to become of my business?"
Dolly did not dare give the answer that rose to her tongue, nor let her father know how much she knew. She came up on another side of the subject, and insisted that the consulate might be dispensed with. Mr. Copley did not need the office and might well be tired of it by this time. Dolly pleaded, and her father heard her with a half embarrassed, half sullen face; feeling her affectionate entreaties more than was at all convenient, and conscious at the same time of a whole side of his life that he would be ashamed his daughter should know; and afraid of her guessing it. Alas, for father and child both, when such a state of things comes about!
"Come, father!" said Dolly at last, touching her forehead to his forehead in a sweet kind of caress,—"I want you."
"Suppose I find somebody else to go with you instead of me?"
"Nobody else will do. Come, father! Do come."
"You might set off with Lawrence," said Mr. Copley as if considering, "and I might join you afterwards; at Venice, perhaps, or Nice, or somewhere. Hey?"
"That won't do. I would not go with Mr. Lawrence."