Domestic fiction; England -- Fiction; Fathers and sons -- Fiction; Inheritance and succession -- Fiction
Remember me very kindly to Miss Polly. I hope she will
always think of me as a friend. Would you tell Bawwah to
put three pairs of breeches in hand for me,--leather.
Yours very truly,
RALPH NEWTON.
The wrath of Mr. Neefit on receiving this letter at his shop in
Conduit Street was almost divine. He had heard from Polly an account
of that last interview at Ramsgate, and Polly had told her story as
truly as she knew how to tell it. But the father had never for a
moment allowed himself to conceive that therefore the thing was at
an end, and had instructed Polly that she was not to look upon it
in that light. He regarded his young customer as absolutely bound
to him, and would not acknowledge to himself that such obligation
could be annulled by Polly's girlish folly. And he did believe that
young Newton intended to act, as he called it, "on the square." So
believing, he was ready to make almost any sacrifice of himself; but
that Newton should now go back, after having received his hard money,
was to him a thing quite out of the question. He scolded Polly with
some violence, and asked whether she wanted to marry such a lout as
Moggs. Polly replied with spirit that she wouldn't marry any man till
she found that she could love him, and that the man loved her. "Ain't
he told you as he loves you ever so often?" said Neefit. "I know what
I'm doing of, father," said Polly, "and I'm not going to be drove."
Nevertheless Mr. Neefit had felt certain that if young Newton would
still act upon the square, things would settle themselves rightly.
There was the money due, and, as Neefit constantly said to himself,
"money was a thing as was not to be got over."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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