“If you marry the right one, maybe,” answered Armorer, grudgingly; “but see here, Meg, Esther is different from the other girls; they got married when Jenny was alive to look after them, and I knew the men, and they were both big matches, you know.  Then, too, I was so busy making money while the other girls grew up that I hadn’t time to get real well acquainted with them.  I don’t think they ever kissed me, except when I gave them a check.  But Esther and I ——­” he drummed with his fingers on the boards, his thin, keen face wearing a look that would have amazed his business acquaintances—­“you remember when her mother died, Meg?  Only fifteen, and how she took hold of things!  And we have been together ever since, and she makes me think of her grandmother and her mother both.  She’s never had a wish I knew that I haven’t granted—­why, d——­ it!  I’ve bought my clothes to please her ——­”

“That’s why you are become so well-dressed, Horatio; I wondered how you came to spruce up so!” interrupted Mrs. Ellis.

“It has been so blamed lonesome whenever she went to visit you, but yet I wouldn’t say a word because I knew what a good time she had; but if I had known that there was a confounded, long-legged, sniffy young idiot all that while trying to steal my daughter away from me!” In an access of wrath at the idea Armorer wrenched off the picket that he clutched, at which he laughed and stuck his hands in his pockets.

“Why, Meg, the papers and magazines are always howling that women won’t marry,” cried he, with a fresh sense of grievance; “now, two of my girls have married, that’s enough; there was no reason for me to expect any more of them would!  There isn’t one d——­ bit of need for Esther to marry!”

“But if she loves the young fellow and he loves her, won’t you let them be happy?”

“He won’t make her happy.”

“He is a very good fellow, truly and really, ’Raish.  And he comes of a good family ——­”

“I don’t care for his family; and as to his being moral and all that, I know several young fellows that could skin him alive in a bargain that are moral as you please.  I have been a moral man, myself.  But the trouble with this Lossing (I told Esther I didn’t know anything about him, but I do), the trouble with him is that he is chock full of all kinds of principles!  Just as father was.  Don’t you remember how he lost parish after parish because he couldn’t smooth over the big men in them?  Lossing is every bit as pig-headed.  I am not going to have my daughter lead the kind of life my mother did.  I want a son-in-law who ain’t going to think himself so much better than I am, and be rowing me for my way of doing business.  If Esther MUST marry I’d like her to marry a man with a head on him that I can take into business, and who will be willing to live with the old man.  This Lossing has got his notions of making a sort of Highland chief affair of the labor question, and we should get along about as well as the Kilkenny cats!”