“What's that?” said the old man, staring at him with a kind of comic gravity—“out of respect to my wishes!”
“That's what I've said,” replied the son. “Proceed.”
His father looked at' him again, and replied, “Proceed yourself—-it was you introduced the subject. I'm now jack-indifferent about it.”
“All I have to say,” continued Hycy, “is that I withdraw my ultimate refusal, Mr. Burke. I shall entertain the question, as they say; and it is not improbable but that I may dignify the fair Katsey with the honorable title of Mrs. Burke.”
“I wish you had spoken a little sooner, then,” replied his father, “bekaise it so happens that Gerald Cavanagh an' I have the match between her and your brother Ned as good as made.”
“My brother Ned! Why, in the name of; all that's incredible, how could that be encompassed?”
“Very aisily,” said his father, “by the girl's waitin' for him. Ned is rather young! yet, I grant you; he's nineteen, however, and two years more, you know, will make him one-and-twenty—take him out o' chancery, as they say.”
“Very good, Mr. Burke, very good; in that case I have no more to say.”
“Well,” pursued the father, in the same dry, half-comic, half-sarcastic voice, “but what do you intend to do with yourself?”
“As to that,” replied Hycy, who felt that the drift of the conversation was setting in against him, “I shall take due time to consider.”