If I tell you this, promise me you won't laugh.
It's indecent for me to laugh; mamma would never forgive me. The old dear!
I'm so fond of him!"
The "old dear," it seems, is Micky's father--a very superior sort of father
for such a son to have, but accidents will happen in the best-regulated
families. He is a gallant widower of fair estate, one of those splendid old
club-men of London; a very expensive article of old gentleman, with fine
old-fashioned manners and morals, and a few stray impulses left, it would
seem by what follows. According to the father's code, the son has not
conducted himself in his engagement to Kitty Comyn as a gentleman should.
Thereupon the head of the house goes to Miss Kitty's mother and makes the
_amende honorable_ by offering his hand and heart and fortune to his son's
insulted bride! The mother is touched and pleased not a little by this
prompt espousal of her daughter's cause; and having wiped away all tears
from _her_ eyes, this gallant old gentleman is coming over to America, for
the first time in his life, to make his proposal to the bride herself! He
is not so old, to get down to particulars; sixty-three doesn't look so
old to some of us as it does to Miss Kitty.
Pages:
215
216
217
218
219
220
221
222
223
224
225
226
227
228
229
230
231
232
233
234
235
236
237
238
239