“But I do—Wey, Smiler!—’Od rot the women, ’tis nothing else wi’ ’em nowadays but getting young men and leading ’em astray.”
“Pooh, father! you just repeat what all the common world says; that’s all you do.”
“The world’s a very sensible feller on things in jineral, Dick; very sensible indeed.”
Dick looked into the distance at a vast expanse of mortgaged estate. “I wish I was as rich as a squire when he’s as poor as a crow,” he murmured; “I’d soon ask Fancy something.”
“I wish so too, wi’ all my heart, sonny; that I do. Well, mind what beest about, that’s all.”
Smart moved on a step or two. “Supposing now, father,—We-hey, Smart!—I did think a little about her, and I had a chance, which I ha’n’t; don’t you think she’s a very good sort of—of—one?”
“Ay, good; she’s good enough. When you’ve made up your mind to marry, take the first respectable body that comes to hand—she’s as good as any other; they be all alike in the groundwork; ’tis only in the flourishes there’s a difference. She’s good enough; but I can’t see what the nation a young feller like you—wi’ a comfortable house and home, and father and mother to take care o’ thee, and who sent ’ee to a school so good that ’twas hardly fair to the other children—should want to go hollering after a young woman for, when she’s quietly making a husband in her pocket, and not troubled by chick nor chiel, to make a poverty-stric’ wife and family of her, and neither hat, cap, wig, nor waistcoat to set ’em up with: be drowned if I can see it, and that’s the long and the short o’t, my sonny.”
Dick looked at Smart’s ears, then up the hill; but no reason was suggested by any object that met his gaze.
“For about the same reason that you did, father, I suppose.”
“Dang it, my sonny, thou’st got me there!” And the tranter gave vent to a grim admiration, with the mien of a man who was too magnanimous not to appreciate artistically a slight rap on the knuckles, even if they were his own.