“I did. Say, Captain, except as a prospective son-in-law, and then only because I don't see him in that light--I rather like that grandson of yours. He's a fine, upstanding young chap.”
The captain made no reply. He merely pulled at his beard. However, he did not look displeased.
“He's a handsome specimen, isn't he?” went on Fosdick. “No wonder Madeline fell for his looks. Those and the poetry together are a combination hard to resist--at her age. And he's a gentleman. He handled himself mighty well while I was stringing him just now.”
The beard tugging continued. “Um-hm,” observed Captain Zelotes dryly; “he does pretty well for a--South Harniss gentleman. But we're kind of wastin' time, ain't we, Mr. Fosdick? In spite of his looks and his manners and all the rest, now that you've seen him you still object to that engagement, I take it.”
“Why, yes, I do. The boy is all right, I'm sure, but--”
“Sartin, I understand. I feel the same way about your girl. She's all right, I'm sure, but--”
“We're agreed on everything, includin' the 'but.' And the 'but' is that New York is one place and South Harniss is another.”
“So we don't want 'em to marry. Fine. First rate! Only now we come to the most important 'but' of all. What are we going to do about it? Suppose we say no and they say yes and keep on sayin' it? Suppose they decide to get married no matter what we say. How are we goin' to stop it?”
His visitor regarded him for a moment and then broke into a hearty laugh.
“Snow,” he declared, “you're all right. You surely have the faculty of putting your finger on the weak spots. Of course we can't stop it. If these two young idiots have a mind to marry and keep that mind, they WILL marry and we can't prevent it any more than we could prevent the tide coming in to-morrow morning. _I_ realized that this was a sort of fool's errand, my coming down here. I know that this isn't the age when parents can forbid marriages and get away with it, as they used to on the stage in the old plays. Boys and girls nowadays have a way of going their own gait in such matters. But my wife doesn't see it in exactly that way, and she was so insistent on my coming down here to stop the thing if I could that--well, I came.”