“’Pon my soul, sir,” stammered I, while I felt myself blushing to the eyes, “I—I—we were only pulling flowers, sir.”
“Ah! my dear boy,” he sighed and went on, “take care that, while you pull the flowers, you do not plant thorns for both hereafter.” I had expected nothing short of thorns for my roses; but he surprised me a little when he proceeded: “Ellen is my ward: she is a good girl, and will be a rich girl; and you know very well I would not be acting as a guardian worthy such a trust, if I encouraged the addresses of one whose fortune is still to make, and whose attachments, Harry, have still to undergo the changes of the most fickle time in his life. Come, tell me candidly, now, how far has this business gone?”
Here was a pretty reckoning to be run up under a hedge. I was silent and sheepish for a while; but told him honestly all about it, so soon as I could speak without choking on every second word.
“Surely,” said he, when I had done, “you must have been aware of the great impropriety of trying to engage this young lady’s affections without my sanction—I am her guardian, you know.”
“I declare, my dear sir, I never knew that you were her guardian,” I exclaimed; “I never knew she had any fortune to guard.”
He smiled, and asked, “Were you ever in love before, Harry?”
“Never, sir, upon my honour—except once—but that was nothing.”
“Nothing to this, I suppose,” he replied; “and this, I daresay, will be nothing to the next. Tut, man! I was a young fellow once myself, and remember many a time when I would have given my eyes to have walked to church with one pretty girl, and my head, I suppose, if I could, to have walked home with another. I was just your age then—what age are you now, Harry?”
“Nineteen past, sir” (it was not a week since my birthday).