"No name can be too fine for a pretty girl or a good frigate, Mr
Simple. I was three hours with Seraphina before her father came home,
and during that time I never was quietly at an anchor for above a
minute. I was on my knees, vowing and swearing, kissing her feet, and
kissing her hand, till at last I got to her lips, working my way up as
regularly as one who gets in at the hawsehole and crawls aft to the
cabin windows. She was very kind, and she smiled, and sighed, and
pushed me off, and squeezed my hand, and was angry--frowning till I was
in despair, and then making me happy again with her melting dark eyes
beaming kindly, till at last she said that she would try to love me, and
asked me whether I would marry her and live in Spain. I replied that I
would; and, indeed, I felt as if I could, only at the time the thought
occurred to me where the rhino was to come from, for I could not live,
as her father did, upon a paper cigar and a piece of melon per day. At
all events, as far as words went, it was a settled thing. When her
father came home, the old servant told him that I had just at that
moment arrived, and that his daughter was in her own room; so she was,
for she ran away as soon as she heard her father knock. I made my bow
to the old gentleman, and gave him the cigars. He was serious at first,
but the sight of them put him into good humour, and in a few minutes
Donna Seraphina (they call a lady a Donna in Spain) came in, saluting me
ceremoniously, as if we had not been kissing for the hour together. I
did not remain long, as it was getting late, so I took a glass of the
old gentleman's sour wine, and walked off with a request from him to
call again.
"Well, Mr Simple, I met her again and again, until I was madly in love,
and the father appeared to be aware of what was going on, and to have no
objection. However, he sent for a priest to talk with me, and I again
said that I was a good Catholic.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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