“Why, madam,” says he, “the case is plain enough upon me, it explains itself; she won’t have me, she says; is not that plain enough? I think ’tis plain, and pretty rough too.” “Well, but,” says the mother, “you talk of conditions that you cannot grant; what does she want—a settlement? Her jointure ought to be according to her portion; but what fortune does she bring you?” “Nay, as to fortune,” says Robin, “she is rich enough; I am satisfied in that point; but ’tis I that am not able to come up to her terms, and she is positive she will not have me without.”
Here the sisters put in. “Madam,” says the second sister, “ ’tis impossible to be serious with him; he will never give a direct answer to anything; you had better let him alone, and talk no more of it to him; you know how to dispose of her out of his way if you thought there was anything in it.” Robin was a little warmed with his sister’s rudeness, but he was even with her, and yet with good manners too. “There are two sorts of people, madam,” says he, turning to his mother, “that there is no contending with; that is, a wise body and a fool; ’tis a little hard I should engage with both of them together.”
The younger sister then put in. “We must be fools indeed,” says she, “in my brother’s opinion, that he should think we can believe he has seriously asked Mrs. Betty to marry him, and that she has refused him.”
“Answer, and answer not, say Solomon,” replied her brother. “When your brother had said to your mother that he had asked her no less than five times, and that it was so, that she positively denied him, methinks a younger sister need not question the truth of it when her mother did not.” “My mother, you see, did not understand it,” says the second sister. “There’s some difference,” says Robin, “between desiring me to explain it, and telling me she did not believe it.”
“Well, but, son,” says the old lady, “if you are disposed to let us into the mystery of it, what were these hard conditions?” “Yes, madam,” says Robin, “I had done it before now, if the teasers here had not worried me by way of interruption. The conditions are, that I bring my father and you to consent to it, and without that she protests she will never see me more upon that head; and to these conditions, as I said, I suppose I shall never be able to grant. I hope my warm sisters will be answered now, and blush a little; if not, I have no more to say till I hear further.”
This answer was surprising to them all, though less to the mother, because of what I had said to her. As to the daughters, they stood mute a great while; but the mother said with some passion, “Well, I had heard this before, but I could not believe it; but if it is so, then we have all done Betty wrong, and she has behaved better than I ever expected.” “Nay,” says the eldest sister, “if it be so, she has acted handsomely indeed.” “I confess,” says the mother, “it was none of her fault, if he was fool enough to take a fancy to her; but to give such an answer to him, shows more respect to your father and me than I can tell how to express; I shall value the girl the better for it as long as I know her.” “But I shall not,” says Robin, “unless you will give your consent.” “I’ll consider of that a while,” says the mother; “I assure you, if there were not some other objections in the way, this conduct of hers would go a great way to bring me to consent.” “I wish it would go quite through it,” says Robin; “if you had as much thought about making me easy as you have about making me rich, you would soon consent to it.”
“Why, Robin,” says the mother again, “are you really in earnest? Would you so fain have her as you pretend?” “Really, madam,” says Robin, “I think ’tis hard you should question me upon that head after all I have said. I won’t say that I will have her; how can I resolve that point, when you see I cannot have her without your consent? Besides, I am not bound to marry at all. But this I will say, I am in earnest in, that I will never have anybody else if I can help it; so you may determine for me. Betty or nobody is the word, and the question which of the two shall be in your breast to decide, madam, provided only, that my good-humoured sisters here may have no vote in it.”
All this was dreadful to me, for the mother began to yield, and Robin pressed her home on it. On the other hand, she advised with the eldest son, and he used all the arguments in the world to persuade her to consent; alleging his brother’s passionate love for me, and my generous regard to the family, in refusing my own advantages upon such a nice point of honour, and a thousand such things.
