“I had dreamed,” the old actor declaimed in a voice that rustled with Irish foliage and was at the same time fruity with pompous tragic tones, “I had dreamed of many harpy yeers before us, harpy, harpy yeers in which I would behold my only daughter growing more like her beloved mother whose loss has darkened the whole of my existence, since I laid her to rest to wait for the last trump to ring out above the moil and toil of Newcastle-on-Tyne. Young man, you have wounded a father in his tenderest spot. You have shattered his hopes. You have torn the fibres of his heart. In my mind’s eye I perceive my little daughter still clutching at the dear maternal breast, and you blast that sacred vision by proposing to commit matrimony with this tender suckling.” “But, O’Finn, you didn’t object to her acting in other companies till she was twelve years old; and for four years after that she lived with an aunt in Dublin, so that you hardly ever saw her.” “Young man, do not taunt an unhappy parent with what he has missed. She and I were clutched by the iron hand of circumstance. The practical considerations of finance ruled that we should live sundered until now; but now, now at the very moment when the clouds are breaking to a glorious day, you descend upon us like a thunderbolt out of a clear sky and propose to marry this motherless child and drench the cheeks of a stricken father with tears, idle tears.” “But, O’Finn, Nancy isn’t as young as all that,” Bram protested. “Spare your taunts, young man. I charge you, spare them. Be content with the havoc you have wrought, but do not gloat like a vulture upon the reeking ruins.” “Look here, O’Finn, can’t we discuss this matter sensibly?” “Sensibly?” cried the heavy father, throwing up his arms as a suppliant at the throne of Heaven. “Sensibly? Ha-ha! Tarquin’s loathly form steals into my domestic hearth and ravishes my daughter’s love, and I, I the broken-hearted parent, am invited by the ravisher himself to discuss the matter sensibly! Tempt me not to violence, young man. Do not tempt me, I say. For twenty years, whenever I have had occasion to visit the metropolis of the Midlands, I have stayed in Mrs. Prattman’s comfortable lodgings without ever breaking so much as a humble egg-cup. Do not tempt me to bring the whole house about my ears in the wild and uncontrollable fury of despair.” Bram began to laugh. “He laughs! Ha-ha! He laughs! He surveys the havoc he has made and laughs! A hyena wandering in a desert might abstain from laughter at such a moment, but not this young man. No, no! _He_ laughs.” “I’m really very sorry, O’Finn, but if you will go on talking like that, I simply can’t help laughing.” At this moment Nancy herself entered the sitting-room. “Hello, boys, what’s the joke? Do tell a pal,” she cried in a radiance of good-fellowship. The heavy father sank down into one of Mrs. Prattman’s armchairs and buried his head in his knees.