"I'll tell you what I'd have. I'd have Captain Ussher ask your father or brother's consent: there's no doubt, we all know, but he'd get it; but it's customary, and, in my mind, it would only be decent." "So he will, I dare say; but mayn't there be rasons why he don't wish to have it talked about yet?" "Then, Feemy, in your situation, do you think a long clandestine engagement is quite the thing for you; is quite prudent?" "And how can it be clandestine, Father John, when you and Thady, and every one else almost, knows all about it?" Feemy's sharpness was too much for Father John, so he had to put it on another tack. "Well, Feemy, now just look at the matter this way, one moment: supposing now--only just for supposition--this lover of yours was not the sort of man we all take him to be, and that he was to turn out false, or inconstant; suppose now it turned out he had another wife somewhere else--" "Oh, that's nonsense, you know, Father John." "Yes, but just supposing it,--or that he took some vagary into his head, and changed his mind! You must have heard of men doing such things, and why shouldn't your lover as well as another girl's? We're all likely to be deceived in people, and why mayn't we be as well deceived in Captain Ussher, as others have been in those they loved as well? We'll all hope, and think, and believe it's not so; but isn't it as well to be on the safe side, particularly in so important a thing as your happiness, Feemy? You wouldn't like it to be said through the country that you'd been jilted by the handsome captain, and that you'd been thrown off by your lover as soon as he was tired of you?" "And that's thrue for you, Father John; but Myles isn't tired of me, else why should he be coming up here to see me oftener than ever?" "But it's that he never may be tired of you, Feemy; take my word for it, he'll respect you a great deal more if you'll show more respect to yourself." "Well, Father John, and what is it you'd have me be doing?" "Why, then, I'd just ask him to speak a word to Thady--just to propose himself in the regular way." "But Thady hates him so." "No; Thady don't hate him: he's only jealous lest Captain Ussher isn't treating you quite as he ought to do." "But Thady is so queer in his manners; and I know Myles wouldn't like to be asking leave and permission to be courting me." "But, Feemy, he must like it; and you shouldn't like your lover the more for thinking so little of your brother, or, for the matter of that, of yourself either." "You know, Father John, I can't help what he thinks of Thady. As to his thinking of me, I'm quite satisfied with that, and I suppose that's enough." Father John was beginning to wax wroth, partly because he was displeased with Feemy himself, and partly because Feemy answered him too knowingly.