"I shouldn't be a bit surprised if she said 'No,' Admiral Havenful; not one bit, sir," said Mr. Toosypegs, mournfully; "it's my luck, always, to have the most dreadful things happen to me! I declare it's enough to make a fellow mad enough to go and do something to himself--it actually is."
"Don't now, Orlando, don't now," said the admiral, severely; "it isn't proper, you know, and you really shouldn't. There's a proverb I'm trying to think of," said the admiral, knitting his brow in intense perplexity; "you know the Book of Proverbs, Orlando, don't you? Hold on, now, till I see: 'Fain'--no--yes, 'Fain heart--fain heart never won a fair lady.'" Again the old sailor reverentially removed his hat. "That's it, Orlando; 'fain heart never won fair lady.' Now, look here: you go straight along and ask Firefly if she's willing to cruise under your flag through life, and if she lays her hand in yours, and says 'I'm there, messmate!' by St. Paul Jones! we'll have such a wedding as never was seen in old Maryland since Calvert came over. Hoorah!" yelled the admiral, waving his hat over his head in an unexpected outburst of delight, that quite startled Mr. Toosypegs.
"Admiral Havenful, I'll do it! I will, by granny!" exclaimed Mr. Toosypegs jumping up in the excitement of the moment. "I'll go right straight over to Heath Hill and ask her. Why, she actually might say 'Yes,' after all. Oh, my gracious! if she does, won't it be nice? What will aunt Prisciller say? Admiral Havenful, it was real kind of you to advise me so, and tell me what to do; and I'm ever so much obliged to you--I really am," said Mr. Toosypegs, bustling around, and putting on his hat, and turning to go.
"Keep her to the wind's eye!" roared the admiral, in a burst of enthusiasm, as he brought one tremendous sledge-hammer fist down with an awful thump on the table.
"Admiral Havenful, it is my intention to keep her to the wind's eye as much as possible," said Mr. Toosypegs, who comprehended the sentence about as much as he would a Chinese funeral-oration. "Good-by, now; I'll come right back when it's over, and tell you what she said."
And like the frog immortalized in Mother Goose, who "would a-wooing go," Mr. O. C. Toosypegs "set off with his opera-hat," on that expedition so terrifying to bashful young men--that of going to "pop the question."