have felt with a husband
as wouldn't have wanted me ever to have my own father in his house?
Would that have made me happy?"

"It 'd 've made me happy to know as you was there."

"No, father; there would have been no happiness in it. When I came to
see what he was I knew I should never love him. He was just willing
to take me because of his word;--and was I going to a man like that?
No, father;--certainly not." The poor man was at that moment too far
gone in his misery to argue the matter further, and he lay on the
old sofa, very much at Polly's mercy. "Drop it, father," she said.
"It wasn't to be, and it couldn't have been. You'd better say you'll
drop it." But, sick and uncomfortable as he was on that evening, he
couldn't be got to say that he would drop it.

Nor could he be got to drop it for some ten days after that;--but
on a certain evening he had come home very uncomfortable from the
effects of gin-and-water, and had been spoken to very sensibly both
by his wife and daughter.

By seven on the following morning Ontario Moggs was sitting in the
front parlour of the house at Hendon, and Polly Neefit was sitting
with him. He had never been there at so early an hour before, and
it was thought afterwards by both Mr. and Mrs. Neefit that his
appearance, so unexpected by them, had not surprised their daughter
Polly. Could it have been possible that she had sent a message to him
after that little scene with her father? There he was, at any rate,
and Polly was up to receive him. "Now, Onty, that'll do. I didn't
want to talk nonsense, but just to settle something."

"But you'll tell a fellow that you're glad to see him?"

"No, I won't. I won't tell a fellow anything he doesn't know already.
You and I have got to get married."

"Of course we have."

"But we want father's consent. I'm not going to have him made
unhappy, if I can help it. He's that wretched sometimes at present
that my heart is half killed about him."

"The things he says are monstrous," asserted Moggs, thinking of the
protestation lately made by the breeches-maker in his own hearing,
to the effect that Ralph Newton should yet be made to marry his
daughter.

"All the same I've got to think about him. There's a dozen or so
of men as would marry me, Mr. Moggs; but I can never have another
father."

"I'll be the first of the dozen any way," said the gallant Ontario.

"That depends. However, mother says so, and if father 'll consent,
I won't go ag