“It’s because my father is against me,” Richard went on, and undertook to show that love was so sacred a matter that no father could entirely and for ever resist his son’s inclinations.  Argument being a cool field where the farmer could meet and match him, the young man got on the tramroad of his passion, and went ahead.  He drew pictures of Lucy, of her truth, and his own.  He took leaps from life to death, from death to life, mixing imprecations and prayers in a torrent.  Perhaps he did move the stolid old Englishman a little, he was so vehement, and made so visible a sacrifice of his pride.

Farmer Blaize tried to pacify him, but it was useless.  His jewel he must have.

The farmer stretched out his hand for the pipe that allayeth botheration.  “May smoke heer now,” he said.  “Not when—­somebody’s present.  Smoke in the kitchen then.  Don’t mind smell?”

Richard nodded, and watched the operations while the farmer filled, and lighted, and began to puff, as if his fate hung on them.

“Who’d a’ thought, when you sat over there once, of its comin’ to this?” ejaculated the farmer, drawing ease and reflection from tobacco.  “You didn’t think much of her that day, young gentleman!  I introduced ye.  Well! things comes about.  Can’t you wait till she returns in due course, now?”

This suggestion, the work of the pipe, did but bring on him another torrent.

“It’s queer,” said the farmer, putting the mouth of the pipe to his wrinkled-up temples.

Richard waited for him, and then he laid down the pipe altogether, as no aid in perplexity, and said, after leaning his arm on the table and staring at Richard an instant: 

“Look, young gentleman!  My word’s gone.  I’ve spoke it.  I’ve given ’em the ’surance she shan’t be back till the Spring, and then I’ll have her, and then—­well!  I do hope, for more reasons than one, ye’ll both be wiser—­I’ve got my own notions about her.  But I an’t the man to force a gal to marry ’gainst her inclines.  Depend upon it I’m not your enemy, Mr. Fev’rel.  You’re jest the one to mak’ a young gal proud.  So wait,—­and see.  That’s my ‘dvice.  Jest tak’ and wait.  I’ve no more to say.”

Richard’s impetuosity had made him really afraid of speaking his notions concerning the projected felicity of young Tom, if indeed they were serious.

The farmer repeated that he had no more to say; and Richard, with “Wait till the Spring!  Wait till the Spring!” dinning despair in his ears, stood up to depart.  Farmer Blaize shook his slack hand in a friendly way, and called out at the door for young Tom, who, dreading allusions to his Folly, did not appear.  A maid rushed by Richard in the passage, and slipped something into his grasp, which fixed on it without further consciousness than that of touch.  The mare was led forth by the Bantam.  A light rain was falling down strong warm gusts, and the trees were noisy in the night.  Farmer Blaize requested Richard at the gate to give him his hand, and say all was well.  He liked the young man for his earnestness and honest outspeaking.  Richard could not say all was well, but he gave his hand, and knitted it to the farmer’s in a sharp squeeze, when he got upon Cassandra, and rode into the tumult.