“Ay, good; she’s good enough.  When you’ve made up your mind to marry, take the first respectable body that comes to hand—­she’s as good as any other; they be all alike in the groundwork; ’tis only in the flourishes there’s a difference.  She’s good enough; but I can’t see what the nation a young feller like you—­wi’ a comfortable house and home, and father and mother to take care o’ thee, and who sent ’ee to a school so good that ’twas hardly fair to the other children—­should want to go hollering after a young woman for, when she’s quietly making a husband in her pocket, and not troubled by chick nor chiel, to make a poverty-stric’ wife and family of her, and neither hat, cap, wig, nor waistcoat to set ’em up with:  be drowned if I can see it, and that’s the long and the short o’t, my sonny.”

Dick looked at Smart’s ears, then up the hill; but no reason was suggested by any object that met his gaze.

“For about the same reason that you did, father, I suppose.”

“Dang it, my sonny, thou’st got me there!” And the tranter gave vent to a grim admiration, with the mien of a man who was too magnanimous not to appreciate artistically a slight rap on the knuckles, even if they were his own.

“Whether or no,” said Dick, “I asked her a thing going along the road.”

“Come to that, is it?  Turk! won’t thy mother be in a taking!  Well, she’s ready, I don’t doubt?”

“I didn’t ask her anything about having me; and if you’ll let me speak, I’ll tell ’ee what I want to know.  I just said, Did she care about me?”

“Piph-ph-ph!”

“And then she said nothing for a quarter of a mile, and then she said she didn’t know.  Now, what I want to know is, what was the meaning of that speech?” The latter words were spoken resolutely, as if he didn’t care for the ridicule of all the fathers in creation.

“The meaning of that speech is,” the tranter replied deliberately, “that the meaning is meant to be rather hid at present.  Well, Dick, as an honest father to thee, I don’t pretend to deny what you d’know well enough; that is, that her father being rather better in the pocket than we, I should welcome her ready enough if it must be somebody.”

“But what d’ye think she really did mean?” said the unsatisfied Dick.

“I’m afeard I am not o’ much account in guessing, especially as I was not there when she said it, and seeing that your mother was the only ’ooman I ever cam’ into such close quarters as that with.”

“And what did mother say to you when you asked her?” said Dick musingly.

“I don’t see that that will help ’ee.”

“The principle is the same.”

“Well—­ay:  what did she say?  Let’s see.  I was oiling my working-day boots without taking ’em off, and wi’ my head hanging down, when she just brushed on by the garden hatch like a flittering leaf.  ‘Ann,’ I said, says I, and then,—­but, Dick I’m afeard ’twill be no help to thee; for we were such a rum couple, your mother and I, leastways one half was, that is myself—­and your mother’s charms was more in the manner than the material.”