At ten o’clock Theresa went to bed. She gave me a finger to shake, but embraced her father as if he were her lover.
We were now in the parlour with cigars and spirits on the table. O’Twist, on placing these refreshments before us, had stared at me in the most outrageous manner. I could have punched his head, so angry did his insolence make me.
“Is that fellow mad?” I asked my uncle.
“Why, what makes you think so?”
“His trick of staring. At dinner his eye-balls stood out a foot beyond his cheeks, so intent was his gaze. Is he a Fenian, and does he mistake me for a constable?”
“Pooh, pooh, this is your fancy, my dear boy. O’Twist is the most harmless, good-natured creature in the whole world, and the politest. Corpulent as he is, I can assure you, on occasions he can comport himself with the dignity of a Lord Mayor. He often blunders, but as often recovers himself with capital Irish humour and grace.”
My uncle is a most extraordinary person, I thought. Whatever I find fault with he commends, and strangely, commends for the very qualities that are most wanting. I had too much good taste to pass any remarks upon his daughter’s behaviour to me; he was doing his utmost to make me comfortable, and it would be in the highest degree ungracious to grumble at this early stage. Yet as I was fully persuaded he had remarked his daughter’s manner, I was much surprised that he did not offer some excuses for it. Of course I could understand his silence on the motive of my visit. If I didn’t begin the subject, he couldn’t. It was for me to fall in love with Theresa, and make her in love with me; until the pie was made, he couldn’t very well put his finger in it. Let me confess I was heartily glad that delicacy did restrain him. Had he started the topic, in all probability I should have said something to offend him, for in the mood that then possessed me, nothing could have been more objectionable than a reference to my uncle Tom’s wild and preposterous scheme.
He talked to me a good deal about his brother’s bank and banking in general, and sounded my knowledge of the business with a great number of questions.
“You quite justify Tom’s opinion of you,” he exclaimed. “I should never have thought you capable of acquiring so much information in so short a space of time. Banking is a very fine business, and if Tom takes you into partnership, which he talks of doing, I see no reason why you shouldn’t become a very rich man.”
This was the nearest approach to his brother’s “scheme” which he made. I listened, expecting him to begin on the subject of my marriage with his daughter; but he immediately changed the conversation by inviting me to make myself thoroughly at home while I stayed with him, to call for anything I wanted, to use his horses—in short, to treat him as I treated my uncle Tom, “than which,” he added, “I shall expect no better compliment from you.”