, doctor--"

"Mr Poynter."

"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. Richm