I was beginning to put some clothes on anyhow.
"Then he sha'n't!--I won't let him! Mamma, you mustn't let him!"
"It's all very well for you to say that, and goodness knows I have done my best; but you might as well talk to a wooden figure-head as to your father when he is in one of his moods. He's gone already."
"Gone! Mamma!"
"He said that if he was not back at twelve he would meet you at the church door at half-past; but you know how he may be relied upon to keep an appointment of that kind; especially as he went out of his way to inform me--not for the first time--that the whole business is a pack of rubbish."
There are fathers, no doubt, who take the tenderest interest in everything which concerns their children; especially when they have only two, and both of them are daughters. But if my father has any tenderness in him he manages to conceal the fact from the knowledge of his family. And as for interest, I doubt if he takes any real interest in either of us. When George was coming to the house about seven times a week mamma dropped a hint to papa to sound George as to what was the object of his dropping in so often. But papa could not be induced to take it.
"Don't you try to induce me to ask the man if he intends to make a fool of himself, because I won't do it." That was all that papa could be induced to say.
When, after all, without any prompting from anyone, George put to me the question on which hinged so much of my life's happiness, it was ever so long before anyone said a word about it to papa. As to referring George to him, as some daughters, more fortunately situated, might have done, I knew better. At last, one evening, when I was alone with him in the drawing-room after dinner, I managed to find courage enough to tell him.
"Papa, I think you ought to know that I am engaged to be married."
He looked up from the book which he was reading.