“I am very sorry to hear that Miss Greenmantle has been taken so poorly,” said Mr. Peppercorn, who met Mr. Greenmantle in the street. “It is not very much, I have reason to hope,” said the father, with a look of anger. Why should Mr. Peppercorn be solicitous as to his daughter?
“I am told that Dr. Miller is rather alarmed.” Then Polly called at the front door to make special inquiry after Miss Greenmantle’s health.
Mr. Greenmantle wrote to Mrs. Freeborn thanking her for the offer, and expressing a hope that it might not be necessary to move Emily from her own bed. And he thanked all his other neighbours for the pertinacity of their inquiries—feeling however all the while that there was something of a conspiracy being hatched against him. He did not quite think his daughter guilty, but in his answer made to the inquiry of Philip Hughes, he spoke as though he believed that the young man had been the instigator of it. When on the third day his daughter could not get up, and Mr. Miller had ordered a more potent draught, Mr. Greenmantle almost owned to himself that he had been beaten. He took a walk by himself and meditated on it. It was a cruel case. The money was his money, and the girl was his girl, and the young man was his clerk. He ought according to the rules of justice in the world to have had plenary power over them all. But it had come to pass that his power was nothing. What is a father to do when a young lady goes to bed and remains there? And how is a softhearted father to make any use of his own money when all his neighbours turn against him?
“Miss Greenmantle is to have her own way, father,” Polly said to Mr. Peppercorn on one of these days. It was now the second week in December, and the whole ground was hard with frost. “Dr. Freeborn will be right after all. He never is much wrong. He declared that Emily would be given to Philip Hughes as a Christmas-box.”
“I don’t believe it a bit,” said Mr. Peppercorn.
“It is so all the same. I knew that when she became ill her father wouldn’t be able to stand his ground. There is no knowing what these delicate young ladies can do in that way. I wish I were delicate.”
“You don’t wish anything of the kind. It would be very wicked to wish yourself to be sickly. What should I do if you were running up a doctor’s bill?”
“Pay it—as Mr. Greenmantle does. You’ve never had to pay half-a-crown for a doctor for me, I don’t know when.”
“And now you want to be poorly.”
“I don’t think you ought to have it both ways, you know. How am I to frighten you into letting me have my own lover? Do you think that I am not as unhappy about him as Emily Greenmantle? There he is now going down to the brewery. You go after him and tell him that he shall have what he wants.”
Mr. Peppercorn turned round and looked at her. “Not if I know,” he said.
“Then I shall go to bed,” said Polly, “and send for Dr. Miller tomorrow. I don’t see why I’m not to have the same advantage as other girls. But, father, I wouldn’t make you unhappy, and I wouldn’t cost you a shilling I could help, and I wouldn’t not wait upon you for anything. I wouldn’t pretend to be ill—not for Jack Hollycombe.”
“I should find you out if you did.”
“I wouldn’t fight my battle except on the square for any earthly consideration. But, father—”
“What do you want of me?”
“I am brokenhearted about him. Though I look red in the face, and fat, and all that, I suffer quite as much as Emily Greenmantle. When I tell him to wait perhaps for years, I know I’m unreasonable. When a young man wants a wife, he wants one. He has made up his mind to settle down, and he doesn’t expect a girl to bid him remain as he is for another four or five years.”
“You’ve no business to tell him anything of the kind.”
“When he asks me I have a business—if it’s true. Father!”
“Well!”
“It is true. I don’t know whether it ought to be so, but it is true. I’m very fond of you.”
“You don’t show it.”
“Yes, I am. And I think I do show it, for I do whatever you tell me. But I like him the best.”
“What has he done for you?”
“Nothing;—not half so much as I have done for him. But I do like him the best. It’s human nature. I don’t take on to tell him so;—only once. Once I told him that I loved him better than all the rest—and that if he chose to take my word for it, once spoken, he might have it. He did choose, and I’m not going to repeat it, till I tell him when I can be his own.”
“He’ll have to take you just as you stand.”
“May be; but it will be worth while for him to wait just a little, till he shall see what you mean to do. What do you mean to do with it, father? We don’t want it at once.”
“He’s not edicated as a gentleman should be.”
“Are you?”
“No; but I didn’t try to get a young woman with money. I made the money, and I’ve a right to choose the sort of son-in-law my daughter shall marry.”
“No; never!” she said.
“Then he must take you just as you are; and I’ll make ducks and drakes of the money after my own fashion. If you were married tomorrow what do you mean to live upon?”
“Forty shillings a week. I’ve got it all down in black and white.”
“And when children come;—one after another, year by year.”
“Do as others do. I’ll go bail my children won’t starve;—or his. I’d work for them down to my bare bones.
