"Somewhat Dutch-like, I take it," said the skipper, puffing out a volume of smoke; "a little bluff in the bows, and great stowage, eh?"
"You leaned then towards the widows?" said Power.
"Exactly; I confess, a widow always was my weakness. There was something I ever liked in the notion of a woman who had got over all the awkward girlishness of early years, and had that self-possession which habit and knowledge of the world confer, and knew enough of herself to understand what she really wished, and where she would really go."
"Like the trade winds," puffed the skipper.
"Then, as regards fortune, they have a decided superiority over the spinster class. I defy any man breathing,--let him be half police-magistrate, half chancellor,--to find out the figure of a young lady's dower. On your first introduction to the house, some kind friend whispers, 'Go it, old boy; forty thousand, not a penny less.' A few weeks later, as the siege progresses, a maiden aunt, disposed to puffing, comes down to twenty; this diminishes again one half, but then 'the money is in bank stock, hard Three-and-a-Half.' You go a little farther, and as you sit one day over your wine with papa, he certainly promulgates the fact that his daughter has five thousand pounds, two of which turn out to be in Mexican bonds, and three in an Irish mortgage."
"Happy for you," interrupted Power, "that it be not in Galway, where a proposal to foreclose, would be a signal for your being called out and shot without benefit of clergy."
"Bad luck to it, for Galway," said the adjutant. "I was nearly taken in there once to marry a girl that her brother-in-law swore had eight hundred a year; and it came out afterwards that so she had, but it was for one year only; and he challenged me for doubting his word too."
"There's an old formula for finding out an Irish fortune," says Power, "worth, all the algebra they ever taught in Trinity. Take the half of the assumed sum, and divide it by three; the quotient will be a flattering representative of the figure sought for."
"Not in the north," said the adjutant, firmly,--"not in the north, Power. They are all well off there. There's a race of canny, thrifty, half-Scotch niggers,--your pardon, Doctor, they are all Irish,--linen-weaving, Presbyterian, yarn-factoring, long-nosed, hard-drinking fellows, that lay by rather a snug thing now and then. Do you know, I was very near it once in the north. I've half a mind to tell you the story; though, perhaps, you'll laugh at me."