invite here, I wonder!'

Elfride began to cry at this very unpropitious aspect of affairs.
'O papa, papa, forgive me and him! We care so much for one another,
papa--O, so much! And what he was going to ask you is, if you will allow
of an engagement between us till he is a gentleman as good as you. We
are not in a hurry, dear papa; we don't want in the least to marry now;
not until he is richer. Only will you let us be engaged, because I love
him so, and he loves me?'

Mr. Swancourt's feelings were a little touched by this appeal, and he
was annoyed that such should be the case. 'Certainly not!' he replied.
He pronounced the inhibition lengthily and sonorously, so that the 'not'
sounded like 'n-o-o-o-t!'

'No, no, no; don't say it!'

'Foh! A fine story. It is not enough that I have been deluded
and disgraced by having him here,--the son of one of my village
peasants,--but now I am to make him my son-in-law! Heavens above us, are
you mad, Elfride?'

'You have seen his letters come to me ever since his first visit, papa,
and you knew they were a sort of--love-letters; and since he has been
here you have let him be alone with me almost entirely; and you guessed,
you must have guessed, what we were thinking of, and doing, and you
didn't stop him. Next to love-making comes love-winning, and you knew it
would come to that, papa.'

The vicar parried this common-sense thrust. 'I know--since you press me
so--I know I did guess some childish attachment might arise between
you; I own I did not take much trouble to prevent it; but I have not
particularly countenanced it; and, Elfride, how can you expect that I
should now? It is impossible; no father in England would hear of such a
thing.'

'But he is the same man, papa; the same in every particular; and how can
he be less fit for me than he was before?'

'He appeared a young man with well-to-do friends, and a little property;
but having neither, he is another man.'

'You inquired nothing about him?'

'I went by Hewby's introduction. He should have told me. So should
the young man himself; of course he should. I consider it a most
dishonourable thing to come into a man's house like a treacherous
I-don't-know-what.'

'But he was afraid to tell you, and so should I have been. He loved me
too well to like to run the risk. And as to speaking of his friends on
his first visit, I don't see why he should have done so at all. He came
here on business: it was no affair of ours