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 my 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, they 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,’
saysthe mother, ‘it was none of her fault, if he was fool enough
totake 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 a 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. And as to the father, he
was a man in a hurry of public affairs and getting money,
seldom at home, thoughtful of the main chance, but left all
those things to his wife.
You may easily believe, that when the plot was thus, as they
thought, broke out, and that every one thought they knew how
things were carried, it was not so difficult or so dangerous for
the elder brother, whom nobody suspected of anything, to have
a freer access to me than before; nay, the mother, which was
just as he wished, proposed it to him to talk with Mrs. Betty.
‘For it may be, son,’ said she, ‘you may see farther into the