"Fay and I would do a good deal to oblige you, my beloved governor, if we could get up the steam a little, but I'm afraid we really _cannot_. Love ain't in one's own hands, you see, but a skittish mare, that gets her head, and takes the bit between her teeth, and bolts off with you wherever she likes. Is it possible that two people who broke each other's toys, and teased each other's lives out, and caught the measles of each other, from their cradle upwards, should fall in love with each other when they grow up? Besides, I don't intend to marry for the next twenty years, if I can help it. I couldn't afford a milliner's bill to my tailor's, and I should be ruined for life if I merged my bright particular star of a self into a respectable, lark-shunning, bill-paying, shabby-hatted, family man. Good Heavens, what a train of horrors comes with the bare idea!" "Do you mean to say, sir, you won't marry your cousin?" shouted the General. "Bless your dear old heart, _no_, governor--ten times over, _no_! I wouldn't marry anybody, not for half the universe." "Then I've done with you, sir--I wash my hands of you!" shouted the General, tearing up and down the room in a quick march, more beneficial to his feelings than his carpet. "You are an ungrateful, unprincipled, shameless young man, and are no more worthy of the affection and the interest I've been fool enough to waste on you than a tom-cat. You're an abominably selfish, ungrateful, unnatural boy; and though you _are_ poor Phil's son, I will tell you my mind, sir; and I must say I think your conduct with your cousin, making love to her--desperate love to her--winning her affections, poor unhappy child, and then making a jest of her and treating it with a laugh, is disgraceful, sir--_disgraceful_, do you hear?" "Yes, I hear, General," cried Sydie, convulsed with laughter; "but Fay cares no more for me than for those geraniums. We are fond of one another, in a cool, cousinly sort of way, but----" "Hold your tongue!" stormed the General. "Don't dare to say another word to me about it. You know well enough that it has been the one delight of my life, and if you'd had any respect or right feeling in you, you'd marry her to-morrow." "She wouldn't be a party to that. Few women _are_ blind to my manifold attractions; but Fay's one of 'em. Look here, governor," said Sydie, laying his hand affectionately on the General's shoulder, "did it never occur to you that though the pretty castle's knocked down, there may be much nicer bricks left to build a new one? Can't you see that Fay doesn't care two buttons about me, but cares a good many diamond studs about somebody else?" "Nothing has occurred to me but that you and she are two heartless, selfish, ungrateful chits. Hold your tongue, sir!" "But, General----"