"You young ones are always looking for us old ones to go. We all know that well enough." "That's when you've got anything to leave behind you, which hain't the case with you, governor, just at present. But what I was saying is this. He'll know well enough that you can split upon his son hafter he's gone, every bit as well as you can split on him now." "Oh, I always looked to make the young gentleman pay up handsome, if so be the old gentleman went off the hooks. And if so be he and I should go off together like, why you'd carry on, of course. You'll have the proofs, you know." "Oh, I should, should I? Well, we'll look to them by-and-by. But I'll tell you what, governor, the best way is to make all that safe. We'll make him another hoffer--for a regular substantial family harrangement--" "A family arrangement, eh?" "Yes; that's the way they always manage things when great family hinterests is at stake. Let him give us a cool seven thousand a year between us while he's alive; let him put you down for twenty thousand when he's dead--that'd come out of the young gentleman's share of the property, of course--and then let him give me his daughter Hemmeline, with another twenty thousand tacked on to her skirt-tail. I should be mum then for hever for the honour of the family." The father for a moment or two was struck dumb by the magnitude of his son's proposition. "That's what I call playing the game firm," continued the son. "Do you lay down your terms before him, substantial, and then stick to 'em. 'Them's my terms, Sir Thomas,' you'll say. 'If you don't like 'em, as I can't halter, why in course I'll go elsewhere.' Do you be firm to that, and you'll see how the game'll go." "And you think he'll give you his daughter in marriage?" "Why not? I'm honest born, hain't I? And she's a bastard." "But, Aby, you don't know what sort of people these are. You don't know what her breeding has been." "D---- her breeding. I know this: she'd get a deuced pretty fellow for her husband, and one that girls as good as her has hankered hafter long enough. It won't do, governor, to let people as is in their position pick and choose like. We've the hupper hand, and we must do the picking and choosing." "She'd never have you, Aby; not if her father went down on his knees to her to ask her." "Oh, wouldn't she? By heaven, then, she shall, and that without any kneeling at all. She shall have me, and be deuced glad to take me. What! she'd refuse a fellow like me when she knows that she and all belonging to her'd be turned into the streets if she don't have me! I'm clear of another way of thinking, then. My opinion is she'd come to me jumping. I'll tell you what, governor, you don't know the sex."