"No offence meant--far from it; but of course I can't help seeing how things are. Come, you'll give your consent, and get hers, and I'll make settlements--anything you like. You shall come and have a bit o' dinner with us every Sunday, and a glass o' real port wine; and if you'd rather have a cab to come home, why, there you are. Come, there's my hand. Where's yours?" "Do I understand--" "Stop a moment, doctor. Of course you'll attend us, whether we're ill or whether we ain't. Keep us in order, like; and as to your fees, why, I ask you now, as a man, what is a fee to me?" "Mr Poynter!" "One moment, doctor. I don't say anything about a brougham. If Miss Richmond--I say, doctor, what made you call her Richmond and him Hendon?" "A foolish whim--eccentricity," said the doctor coldly. "One child was born on the North Road, the other at the pretty old place on the south west." "I see. Well, as I was saying, if Miss Richmond likes it to be a brougham, either the real thing, or on the job, she has only got to speak, and it's lies." "Am I to understand, Mr Poynter, that this is a formal proposal for my daughter's hand?" "That's it. How you can put it, doctor! You're right; it is, and there's my hand." "Mr Poynter," said the doctor, drawing himself up in his chair, and without taking the extended hand, "that is a matter upon which I am not prepared to speak." "Why, you're her father, ain't you?" "Does my daughter sanction this?" "Well--er--yes--no--hardly, because I've never put it to her plump. But you know what women are--sealskins, a carriage, bit o' jewellery, _and_ their own way. Why, of course she does; did you ever know a woman as didn't want to marry? They often say so, but--you know. There, say the word: I'll just go in and see her, and it'll be a good job for all of us, and I shall go away with the day fixed." "No, Mr Poynter," said the doctor gravely; "I have been a medical man for thirty years--a great student, but I must frankly confess that I do _not_ know what women are. As to my daughter, she is of an age to judge for herself, and when she accepts a man for her husband--" "I say, hold hard; there's nothing on, is there?" "You have told me that you love my child." "Like all that, doctor. But you know what I mean: old lover, prior attachment, and that sort of thing." "As far as I know, there has never been any attachment. Richmond is not like most girls." "Right doctor. She isn't. That fetched me. Why, in her plain shabby things--" The doctor winced. "She knocks my sister into fits, and Lyddy spends two-fifty a year in dressmaking and millinery, without counting jewellery and scent." "I may say," continued the doctor, "that my daughter has always devoted herself to her brother and me." "Oh, yes, doctor, I've spotted that," said the visitor, smoking furiously. "And I have never seen any sign of an attachment. I once thought that there was a liking between her and young Mark Heath."